Identity Thief (2013) Directed by Seth Gordon. Starring: Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy, and John Cho. IMDB says: “Mild-mannered businessman Sandy Patterson travels from Denver to Miami to confront the deceptively harmless-looking woman who has been living it up after stealing Sandy’s identity.”
I wasn’t expecting too much out of Identity Thief. I was assuming it would be similar to Horrible Bosses, but on the whole a little less enjoyable. Where Horrible Bosses had a number of laughs and a few likeable characters, Identity Thief really only has one thing going for it in Melissa McCarthy. Even then, it still took most of the movie for me to start caring about her character. Halfway through the movie, I realized they were trying to make the audience root for McCarthy’s character, even though her character had been extremely unlikable to me until then.
It was, eventually, easier for me to choose McCarthy over Bateman. Despite Jason Bateman being the main character, he’s so much of a straight man who is playing the same character he always plays that rooting for him was hard after a certain point. The movie didn’t do a good job of making the audience feel that if they got behind his character there would be a emotional pay off somewhere towards the end. He gets dumped on the whole movie and barely breaks even.
I wouldn’t classify this movie as a comedy. Melissa McCarthy is really the only actor trying to be funny. The situations aren’t even humorous situations. Its as if the writers tried to pile on every single scenario they could think of that could go wrong for the two characters. There were a lot of things happening to the duo, but most of it felt like reused cliches.
The only people I would really recommend Identity Thief to are people who are big fans of Melissa McCarthy. She does do a pretty good job with a pretty bad script. I would probably still recommend that they just rewatch Bridesmaids and wait to see Identity Thief for cheap.
FTS SCORE: 46%
Identity Thief is in theaters February 8th.