It's got raunch and craziness, but at it's heart it's a celebration of kindness, of community. of morality (not the stuffy kind, the good kind) – all while never losing it's sense of fun.
Ed Helms does a very nice job as a tremendously innocent insurance salesman from a small town in Wisconsin, sent to a convention in Cedar Rapids. This represents his first time on a plane, his first time in the 'big city'. But while the film may tease Tim a little, it doesn't treat him with the removed hip irony most films now would, and makes him a complex character (e.g. back home he has a fun sexual fling going with his 7th grade teacher, wonderfully played by Sigourney Weaver. He may be an innocent, but he's also a grown man with a sense of humor and self.).
This ability to both kid and embrace characters is a long-time strength of director Miguel Arteta and producer Alexander Payne. With some terrific support from John C. Reilly as a wild-man party animal at the convention (who has more humanity than you'd think), Isaiah Whitlock Jr. as a straight-laced black room-mate (who has more humor, and more of a sense of fun than you might think), and Anne Heche as a party girl (who is smarter and more soulful than you might think). Maybe not quite a great film, but a good hearted and very enjoyable one.
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