Eagerly anticipating this week ... (5-24)

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (5-24)
Alex Garland's Civil War (2024)

2/19/2015

Cedar Rapids (2011) or, Insurance-Man



Ed Helms looking like a moron, frankly, on the poster for Miguel Arteta's Cedar Rapids

QUICK REIVEW:

Upheaval is coming to a small town insurance company, and a childish employee gets sent to the important award conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Here he learns a thing or two and gets forced to step up.

Cedar Rapids is a low-budget comedy, which looks like a low-budget comedy and is about people in the insurance business ... In other words, it is a pretty unsexy film starring Ed Helms (The Hangover (2009)), whom I didn't think was particularly funny in it.
The film gets lifted by John C. Reilly (Carnage (2011)), and it has some scenes that get laughs, but also many that either miss their targets or are just plain not funny. Its script is written by Phil Johnston (Wreck-It Ralph (2012)).
Cedar Rapids is a thin feel-good comedy that is a near unofficial spin-off of the spectacularly successful Hangover. Perhaps my main issue with it was that I didn't relate to Helm's protagonist at all.
It is directed by the talented Puerto-Rican director Miguel Arteta (Youth in Revolt (2009)), who most recently made the underwhelming Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014).


John C. Reilly, Ed Helms and Isiah Whitlock Jr. in Miguel Arteta's Cedar Rapids



Watch the trailer here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 6.8 mil. $ (US only)
= Uncertainty
[The few foreign numbers I can find suggest that the film also did not set any foreign markets on fire: It made 0.5 mil. $ in the UK, the foreign market where it apparently did best. The film was shot in Michigan due to a more lucrative tax credit offered there. Although I can't know for sure without cost information, it looks like it was a big flop.]

What do you think of Cedar Rapids?

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