A hit with critics across the board – and especially at this year’s Sundance Film Festival – comes the story of Tim Lippe (Ed Helm) who’s about to have the chance of a lifetime….to bring home to his small Wisconsin community, the insurance man’s Oscar: the ASMI two Diamond Award. Afterall, he works for Brown Star insurance and he takes his job very seriously. And besides, what are the chances his colleague will croak and he’ll be the replacement pinch-hitter sent to Cedar Rapids for the annual convention? Arriving in nerdy-striped sweater vest with traveler’s checks in pocket, he’s met by a team of competitive but amusing veterans led by Dean (John C Reilly), Joan O-Fox (Anne Heche) and Robert (Isiah Whitlock Jr.). They’re about to show him the ropes, the booze and the bedroom. [Btw for The Wirefans, Whitlock is totally and fabulously out of character.] If you take the class-act cult flicks of Election and Sideways and merged them withChuck & Buck’s director Miguel Arteta, you’d have this gem of a small indie flick. (Filmmaking 101: Alexander Sideways Payne and Jim ElectionBurke now head up a production company. Burke is a veteran producer with multiple credits including Kingpin and Howard Stern’s Private Parts.) The film manages to tap into off-beat refreshing characters not often portrayed…an insurance man?…redefining the image of these assumedly angelic humans who handle our most precious worlds from fire, to floods to death and jewelry. Helm shows he doesn’t need The Hangover sidekicks to hold his own. Raunchy, twisted and really smart, a comedy that will endure a steady box office run, especially with the fabulously talented John C. Reilly wanting us to voyeur into his world of “insurance men gone wild” adventure. Three and a half tiaras
