Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman in Identity Thief

How many ways can a grown person waste valuable time and lose vital I.Q. points at the same time? If you’re a movie critic, the possibilities are unlimited. And they all come together in a new chunk of junk called Identity Thief.

In the trashy, stupefying screenplay by Craig Mazin, Jason Bateman is a Denver accountant named Sandy Patterson—another in a long line of victims of the increasingly dangerous world of cyber-crime—whose credit card has been hacked and copied by a felonious thief in Miami (cacophonous, tractor-sized Melissa McCarthy). Now there are two Sandy Pattersons—an innocent fraud victim on one side of the country facing bankruptcy and a screeching, humongous creep on a marathon shopping spree on the other side of the country who is running up thousands of dollars in charges and wrecking her victim’s credit rating in the process. The police do nothing, the male Sandy loses his job and faces jail time, and the only solution is to devise a plan to apprehend the fake, female Sandy and drag her from Florida back to Colorado to turn herself in and clear his good name. In order to stretch a five-minute idea into 107 minutes of contrived drivel some people may mistake for plot, the plan backfires. She beats him up, steals his wallet, wrecks his rental car and leaves him stranded on the highway in a pair of pants stolen from a dead hobo. With no identification or money, he gets arrested for assaulting an officer, drug dealing and illegal gun possession. And still, against all odds, they hit the road to Colorado pursued by killers, bounty hunters and “skip tracers,” who track down crooks who owe money to gangsters, jump parole and get involved in other intrigues invented by hack Hollywood screenwriters. The snafus in the worst road movie since The Guilt Trip plunge Mr. Bateman and his female hippo into a motel with only a double bed, a grotesque sex scene with a pickled reprobate she picks up in a bar who demands a threesome, a violent bar fight that bloodies his nose, a kidnapping, a multi-car collision going the wrong way on the freeway ... but why go on? They seem to be making it up as they go along, in a movie that threatens never to end.

By the time they got lost in the woods and fall into a den of hissing snakes, Elvis has long since left the building. Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids) is a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious with equal success. Poor Jason Bateman. How did an actor so charming, talented, attractive and versatile get stuck in so much dreck? Identity theft is a real plague that is happening so often that people tremble every time they approach an ATM. It’s a deserving subject that should be explored in a more viable film, but Identity Thief is so bad it’s hard to believe it wasn’t directed by Judd Apatow or the Farrelly Brothers.

rreed@observer.com

IDENTITY THIEF

Running Time 107 minutes

Written by Craig Mazin (screenplay)
and Jerry Eeten (story)

Directed by Seth Gordon

Starring Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy
and John Cho

Bateman and Reynolds.

The charm, versatility and charisma of Jason Bateman and the camera-ready good looks of Ryan Reynolds should add up to more than a piece of crummy, amateurish junk called The Change-Up. But what else can a discerning filmgoer (I naively presume, perhaps foolishly, there are a few of those left) count on from bogus director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) and sub-mental screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (The Hangover)? Expect an overwhelming surfeit of incompetence and filth.

In this one-joke frat house masturbatory fantasy about two guys who exchange bodies for no reason except to keep a DOA movie going for almost two hours, even the title makes no sense. There is no such thing as a “change-up.” I could understand “change-over” or “trade-off,” but the invasion of one person’s persona into another person’s frame is not a “change-up.” Never mind. Nothing else jells in this farrago of idiocy, either. Mr. Bateman is Dave, a battered but responsible lawyer, husband and father of three, including a pair of twins, who hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in months. Mr. Reynolds, his best friend since the third grade, is Mitch, a pot-smoking, womanizing, free-spirited bachelor-model-actor (a nice 21^st century way of saying “irresponsible, unemployed jerk”). He is a symbol of a former life Dave would like to re-live. Dave hasn’t had time to have sex with his own wife, while Mitch says things to trashy women like “I’d like to strap you to my face and say the alphabet.” One night, after a ball game and a few joints, they pee in a fountain and wish they could trade places. Miraculously, they wake up the next morning in each other’s bodies. Now it is gentle, responsible family man Dave who is talking like a drunken Marine and hangover king Mitch who is forced to attend law firm briefings and burp babies, covered with vomit and diapers filled with what looks like chocolate pudding but isn’t.

The conceit is they look like themselves but talk and act like each other. Dave arrives on a movie set looking like Mitch but to his conservative, button-down horror, it turns out to be a porno film with another man’s finger up his orifices. When the kinky Mitch’s sexy new squeeze shows up for wild, uninhibited sex with Dave, who looks like Mitch, she is nude and nine months pregnant. Meanwhile Mitch, in Dave’s body, tries to keep from sleeping with his best friend’s wife Jamie, played by Leslie Mann, wife of no-talent Judd Apatow and one of the worst actresses in B-movies. Remember her opposite pardon-the-expression Adam Sandler in the abominable Funny People? I couldn’t understand a word she said in that fiasco, and she hasn’t learned a thing since. She sounds like she’s got a mouth full of cotton swabs, stuffed in sideways.

The Change-Up drags on endlessly, held together with scatology, flatulence and masturbation. Everybody gets a chance on the toilet, with all the noise and disgust that graphic bathroom scenes entail. When Mitch tries to teach Dave how to be Mitch by shaving everything off below his Speedo line, and Dave feeds Mitch’s ego with more penis-envy jokes than a bunch of sailors in a locker room, the contrivances pile up like a tower of dominoes. Here is a minor idea with minimal possibilities for mistaken identity routines, plummeting into mind-numbing confusion.  Sooner than you can search the second hand on your watch to see how much more of this you can take, you forget if you are watching Dave in Mitch’s body, or vice versa. It’s worth a chuckle or two to see Mr. Bateman get a chance to be crazy and gregarious, but when will somebody give him a role with some stature? In this sorry waste of time, his energy gets all mixed up with Mr. Reynolds’ pecs and who cares? I finally threw in the towel when Dave, in the body of Mitch, and Sabrina, the sexy law intern in Dave’s office (played by Flavor of the Month Olivia Wilde), who thinks she’s on a date with Mitch, both get their genitals tattooed.

Your move.

rreed@observer.com

THE CHANGE-UP

Running time 112 minutes

Written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore

Directed by David Dobkin

Starring Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Mann

1/4

Spacey.

It’s official: I’ve lost my mojo (temporarily, I hope) and I’m ready for the cracker factory. How else to explain the fact that I actually had a very good time laughing myself silly at a rude romp called Horrible Bosses? Crudely contrived, filled with the kind of sexual gags, filthy dialogue, homophobic jibes, misogynistic insults and racial slurs that bring new meaning to political incorrectness, it’s one of those revolting, raunch-fueled movies churned out in their sleep by the Farrelly brothers and Judd Apatow that I usually hate, but with real cleverness, off-center wit and edgy imagination. Imagine an X-rated Three Stooges farce, and you get the picture.

The plot is simple: Three upscale slacker buddies in suits are so abused in their jobs they want to kill their bosses. Nick, played by the appealing, immensely talented and criminally underrated Jason Bateman, is a wage slave to a big management corporation who is so overworked he hasn’t had sex in six months with anyone other  than himself. After eight years of sacrifice, working 12-hour days and sucking up to  one of the most evil bosses on the planet (Kevin Spacey, hilarious in the toxic mendacity department), Nick deserves a raise. Instead, he gets a wrist watch and a pink slip. Dale (Charlie Day, from  It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) is a dental assistant who works for a crazy, self-centered, sexually obsessed predator who grabs his crotch in a hammerlock hold while she drills root canals (Jennifer Aniston, in the funniest role—maybe only funny role?—of her career). Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) is the account manager at a chemical company where his beloved boss (Donald Sutherland) dies and leaves everything to his sleazy, oversexed cokehead son (an unrecognizable Colin Farrell with a bald head and rolling eyes like targets on a rifle range). These are bosses from hell. Foaming at the mouth with the malignant villainy of Richard III, Mr. Spacey snarls at Mr. Bateman, “I own you. You are my bitch. So get used to it.  You’re in for the long haul.”

Fed up with sexual  harassment, slimy office  politics and no possibility of parole, these spineless losers take stock and decide their only options are misery or murder. So they spend the majority of the movie plotting ways to rid themselves of their albatrosses, opening up a string of possibilities for mirth and mayhem that end in myriad surprises. After getting the plot of Strangers on a Train mixed up with Throw Momma From the Train, they give up the idea of killing each other’s bosses and settle on hiring a hit man. The first one is an S&M master who thinks they’ve ordered a kink job to pee on them. Mortified, they end up in a dangerous black neighborhood and ante up their last $5,000 to hire a professional killer with a name you can’t print in a newspaper (Jamie Foxx). After taking their money, this terrifying thug turns out to  have done some time, all right—for nothing more serious than video piracy.

And on it goes, spiraling into one wild, spontaneous comic situation after another. Accidentally, bodies fall, corpses mount, fate plays the trump card and nothing wraps up as expected. In the zaniest scenes, inspiration comes from great movie references, and these modern Marx Brothers are always one step ahead of both the killers and the cops. The psycho humor in Horrible Bosses literally smokes, thanks to balanced direction by Seth Gordon, a cockeyed script by Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and  Jonathan Goldstein and truly creative work by the entire cast. Mr. Bateman is perfect as the brains of the trio and Mr. Day is delightful as the lunatic who does everything wrong. As much as I hated Mr. Sudeikis in the nauseating Hall Pass (he’s also one of the worst things that ever happened to Saturday Night Live), he makes a believable group lover boy, all cleaned up, close-shaved and hair neatly parted. Mr. Farrell’s creepy comb-over and trashy office full of hot and cold running prostitutes (if I’m not mistaken, one was a dude) are twisted comic profiles close to legendary status. They all left me in stitches, in spite of myself. Jennifer Aniston simulating fellatio with a banana?  What are you waiting for?

rreed@observer.com

HORRIBLE BOSSES

Running time 100 minutes

Written by Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley, Jonathan  Goldstein

Directed by Seth Gordon

Starring Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Kevin Spacey

3/4

Yet such openness was new even to this indulgent part of town. Odder still was the occasion: the after-party for the premiere of Limitless, the big-budget thriller about a pill that lets you access 100 percent of your mind. What audacious devotion to theme! Plentiful drugs at a drug movie party!

Alas, the high procured from these pills was nothing you couldn’t get from a lollipop. (The contraband turned out to be gumdrops.) The crowd would have to make due with a lesser intoxicant: fancy tequila drinks, which would probably be the last thing to render your mind power limitless.

The Observer’s substance intake began with one glass of white wine and one tumbler of Johnnie Walker Black. Nothing illicit there. But his interest had been piqued. He wanted the industry secrets. Which uppers, downers and other fun stuff do the stars use to enhance their brains?

The Observer edged into a back corner and spotted the movie’s pusher himself. Hey, Bradley Cooper! Have you ever tried any drugs that have let you use 100 percent of your mind? Like, Adderall? Or speed?

“Sorry, I can’t talk right now,” he said, pointing to a woman to his left. “Here, this is my mom.”

It seemed best not to interrogate Mr. Cooper in front of his dear mother. Luckily, in a nearby booth was another luminary: James Lipton. He was seated behind the Coopers’ table, a half-eaten plate of Buddakan specialties pushed aside in front of him. He was all Lipton—the goatee, the eyeglasses, the eyebrows.

James, The Observer asked. The drugs. Does he do them?

“I’ve never taken anything stronger than aspirin,” he laughed. “How’s that for square?”

Had he seen Limitless?

He had. And, having seen this film, he knew that, in the film, there is a drug that allows you to use one hundred percent of your mind. Would he ever try such a drug?

“I’d think twice about it,” Mr. Lipton said. “I like to think that I’m usually using 50 percent of my mind.”

On the other side of the room stood cast member T.V. Carpio, who declined to talk about drugs, fictional or otherwise. She preferred to talk about sex.

“The writer told me that, to avoid the R rating, we’ll take out all the sex scenes,” Ms. Carpio explained. “But the director said, ‘They will see you fucking like in real life!’”

Good to know! (At that point, The Observer had added a glass—two glasses?—of Champagne to his total substance intake).

Next up was Patricia Clarkson, in red, sitting legs crossed by the ballroom-bar precipice. If it were available, would she care to sample some 100 percent mind-enhancing movie drug?

“I want the drug, bwa-ha-ha-ha!” she told The Observer.

Is there anything she’s tried that’s come close?

“I’ve never done drugs, of any kind,” she said. “Except I guess alcohol. But a drug that would make me as brilliant as all of my brilliant writer friends? Yes.”

Well, Ms. Clarkson, Adderall comes close, and speed works for some people …

“No, if I did speed or whatever my heart would leap,” she sighed. “I have the highest metabolism. Oh, no, no, no.”

She thanked The Observer—“It’s so cute that you know who I am!”—and he returned to wandering around. Reader, go ahead and add one of those dumb tequila cocktails to the drink count.

The Observer craved more anecdotes of depravity. Surely, there must be someone who’s gone on a pill bender or two. Oh, right. The DJ.

“I took Adderall all of college, it was nuts,” said Cassie Coane. “Wait—Adderall lets you use 100 percent of your mind?”

Well, no.

“But yeah, I love Adderall,” she said. “Adderall’s the best.”

The most memorable interaction of the night, however, was the first. Jason Bateman stood on the stairs when The Observer approached him to ask about his drug use.

“Dude,” he said, his face a bit contorted. “Dude. I don’t know. I—”

At this point, the first of his public-relations assistants approached The Observer, and escorted him away. 

“That’s totally disrespectful and inappropriate.”

Baffling. A second public-relations assistant approached The Observer.

“Did you see the screening?” he asked.

No, The Observer had not.

“Well, if you had, you would know that nine people in the movie died from the drug.”

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

The video is the first combined effort of Electus, a multimedia studio in partnership with IAC, and DumbDumb, a new advertising and production company led by comedians Will Arnett and Jason Bateman. It's called "The Prom Date," and is meant to humorously relay the power of Orbit to clean up "dirty" situations: in this case, a social studies teacher who plans to take the Bateman character's daughter to prom.

The video is now on YouTube, presumably with the intention of using Mr. Bateman's cultlike post-Arrested Development following to catapult it to viral status. Hocking chewing gum via HD YouTube videos with comedic star power is new marketing territory for these companies.

"Major brands recognize that the media landscape is changing quickly and that their success relies a great deal on their ability to expand well beyond traditional advertising,” said Drew Buckley, COO of Electus, in a news release.

George Clooney’s performances are always variations on the same themes: tongue-in-cheek frat-house humor; a rampant ego that makes love to the camera when no girl is around; and the suave wit and good looks of a personality that is droll and self-assured enough to get him over the hurdles when range is required or intelligent dialogue poses a challenge. But in Up in the Air, a delightful new romantic comedy that never suffers from attention deficit disorder, his acting chops are as sharp as his designer suits. There’s less juvenile canoodling, more solid concentration and a welcome indication that for once he might even be taking himself more seriously than just another Hollywood matinee idol.

Guided with precision by Jason Reitman, the Oscar-nominated director of Juno, from an elegant screenplay by Mr. Reitman and Sheldon Turner, based on the satiric novel about corporate America by Walter Kirn, Mr. Clooney gives the most mature performance of his career, in a role as snugly tailored to his caustic charm as cashmere socks. He’s so ingratiating that he regains some of the dignity he lost in the horrible O Brother, Where Art Thou? and a lot of the savvy he trashed in the moronic The Men Who Stare at Goats. In the smart and topical Up in the Air, he plays a man named Ryan Bingham who takes advantage of America’s unhappiest period—the current economic collapse—by traveling all over the map firing people, downsizing companies, draining corporations of their best talent and destroying people’s hopes and futures. Headquartered in Omaha, Ryan is what polite circles refer to as a “career transition counselor” (and what his victims call a “road warrior”), rewarded with expense accounts, and a regular in Hilton hotel bars, rental car agencies and Admirals Club lounges from coast to coast. He spends 322 days on the road and 43 miserable days at home, in a job that comes with a boarding pass; he’s ready to pounce whenever the automobile, housing, health insurance and banking markets fail. His rules: no sympathy, no personal life, no committed relationships. His goal: to reach the elitist level of travelers who amass 10 million frequent-flyer miles. It’s a life no sane human would envy, but things change with sparks like the midnight sun when his job is challenged by a cost-effective new girl trainee in his company, and he meets his equal in a beautiful fellow frequent flyer named Alex (the extraordinary, versatile and alluring Vera Farmiga), who shakes up his marble coolness when she says: “Just think of me as yourself—only with a vagina.”

(Spoiler alert!) The movie shifts into high gear when Ryan inadvertently falls in love, makes somebody else a top priority and discovers with a poignancy that shatters his veneer that he is not one of hers. In movies, it’s always the woman who gets dumped. This time, it’s the man who makes a compromise and pays an enormous emotional price. The woman is totally focused in a double life that provides the film with its biggest surprise. He’s had a taste of the alternative, and going back to his old venal ways will wear off like a bee sting. It’s a film that gives Mr. Clooney the chance to work his special brand of cynicism, and effortlessly play what he does best—the aggressive, sarcastic, self-centered center of everyone else’s emotions, a real man who eats quiche. But he also shows some rare vulnerability for a change, and you like him for it. The movie works as both a short-wired romance between two sophisticated people torn between love and their careers, and as a sober indictment of the kind of people responsible for corporate layoffs and America’s shrinking economy. Jason Reitman is a terrific director who gets better with each film, and he gets a mammoth performance out of George Clooney that will most likely please critics and crowds alike. In Up in the Air, his feet never touch the ground. Another performance this solid, and I might become a fan myself.

rreed@observer.com

Couples Retreat

What’s the story: With fall firmly in the air, what better time to see a movie about a tropical paradise?  Apparently, after having such a good time filming The Break Up, Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman and Peter Billingsley (Ralphie from A Christmas Story!) decided their next adventure would take place on a beach. The four friends reunite for Couples Retreat (Mr. Billingsley directs the others from a script by Messrs. Vaughn and Favreau), a relentlessly mediocre-looking studio comedy that is sure to make us long for the days of Swingers and even Made. As a side note, we’re not sure when Mr. Vaughn became the chief purveyor of these kind of PG-13 comedies (see: Four Christmases), but we liked it a whole lot more when the guy was in rated-R movies. Come back to us, Vince!

Who should see it: Trent and Mike from Swingers.

An Education

What’s the story: Such is life for up-and-coming movie stars in 2009: Carey Mulligan, the ingénue at the center of Lone Scherfig’s An Education has already been crowned the belle of the Oscar ball and her movie hasn’t even come out yet! (By our count, you can expect the backlash to strike sometime around Thanksgiving.) Based on the memoir by Lynn Barber and adapted for the screen by About A Boy’s Nick Hornby, An Education finds Ms. Mulligan starring as a 16-year-old girl in 1960s England who is seduced by an inappropriate 30-something, played by Peter Sarsgaard. Despite the generic-seeming premise, the reviews have been over-the-moon and Ms. Mulligan has been compared to Audrey Hepburn. Inevitable backlash or not, get used to her.

Who should see it: Roman Polanski. (Too soon?)

Also opening this weekend: Michael Sheen and Peter Morgan reunite yet again for The Damned United, which tells the story of the short-lived tenure of Leeds United coach Brian Clough. And Chris Rock gets to the bottom of Good Hair.

And so Labor Day is finally upon us. What a long strange trip this summer movie season has been! What began all the way back in May with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, officially draws to a close over the holiday with three moderately high-profile films finding home on the dumping ground. As we do every Friday, here’s a handy guide to the new releases.

All About Steve

What’s the story: Between The Hangover and The Proposal, Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper saw their summer blockbusters gross $430 million combined. Figure All About Steve to come in with slightly less. Originally scheduled for spring and then moved to Labor Day— otherwise known as the place where movies go to die—Steve finds Ms. Bullock starring as an “eccentric crossword puzzler” (seriously, this is a title) who travels the country stalking Mr. Cooper’s news cameraman after one blind date. Naturally, the reviews have been scathing, so we’d say don’t bother unless you’re a member of Ms. Bullock’s fan club. And even then, just see The Proposal again.

Who should see it: Will Shortz.

Gamer

What’s the story: Speaking of summertime stars … Gerard Butler, who used his gruff charm to help The Ugly Truth win at the box office, returns with the ridiculous-looking Gamer. Sometime in the near future, human beings can control other human beings inside a live-action multiplayer video game. O.K.! Mr. Butler stars as one of the unfortunate people being controlled, and Dexter’s Michael C. Hall shows up sporting a James Carville accent to play the game ringleader. Since this comes from the guys behind Crank, expect the excess to come at you in droves.

Who should see it: Anyone who has ever played Call of Duty.

Extract

What’s the story: You know Mike Judge has had a tough career when his newest film gets released on Labor Day and that counts as a step up from his previous one, the barely seen Idiocracy. The Office Space director’s latest, Extract, sends the milieu back to the workplace, only this time it centers on the boss, played by everyone’s favorite straight man Jason Bateman. The rest of the cast is equally impressive—Ben Affleck, Kristin Wiig, J. K. Simmons and Mila Kunis all co-star—but if we know Mike Judge, Extract will probably have its moments, but on the whole be a disappointing effort.

Who should see it: Bill Lumbergh.

Kevin MacDonald’s State of Play, from a screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray, is based on the six-hour BBC miniseries created by Paul Abbott. The action has been shifted from London to Washington, D.C., which lends itself rather too easily to all sorts of conspiracy scenarios.

Russell Crowe plays Cal McAffrey, an investigative reporter for the Washington Globe, who has many potential conflicts of interest as he pursues the mystery of several seemingly unrelated homicides that are eventually connected to a Congressional committee overseeing corruption charges in the defense budget. The chairman of the committee, Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), is a rising political star in the Kennedy mold, and an old friend of McAffrey’s. The reporter is thus thrust into a difficult position by his hard-headed editor, Helen Mirren’s Cameron Lynne, who wants a front-page story to emerge from the political scandal arising from the mysterious death of Senator Collins’ beautiful young staff member, Sonia Baker (Maria Thayer), with whom Collins had an affair.

A further complication for McAffrey in covering the story is his own old affair with Robin Wright Penn’s Anne Collins, Stephen’s wife, torn between loyalty to her husband’s ideals and regrets for the lost intimacy they once shared. McAffrey’s guilt over his betrayal of his old buddy impels him to shape his story in a way that will not damage his friend’s reputation. McAffrey is thus compromised from the outset and is helped in finding his way back into honest journalism by a nervy young Globe blogger and cub reporter, Rachel McAdams’ Della Frye. One of the refreshing aspects of the film is the nonsexual relationship between McAffrey as an old-style journalist and Della Frye as his technologically more advanced disciple. Between them, they find all the missing links to the exploding Washington, D.C., political scandal that finally hits the front page of the Globe.

The result is a dark, dour film, both literally and figuratively, as cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto’s suspense-laden camera angles keep the central characters perpetually at risk from the swirling variety of passersby in the bustling capital city.

Contributing to the many intrigues in the narrative are Jason Bateman’s amusingly unsavory political fixer and PR specialist, Dominic Foy, and Jeff Daniels’ sinister schemer, Representative George Fergus, who advises Collins to lie low for the sake of the young congressman’s political ambitions.

Nonetheless, it is Mr. Crowe who lends State of Play a sense of perpetual urgency as he traverses the corridors of power in search of massive wrongdoing at the risk of his own life. His is an idealized portrait of a Washington journalist, to be sure, but he remains thoroughly credible as a passionate truth-seeker even when he is pitted against evil forces lurking at the highest levels of power and influence.

I have been following Mr. Crowe’s career ever since his 1991 supporting stint in Jocelyn Moorhouse’s Proof. Now in his mid-40s, Mr. Crowe may be in his prime. The only question is whether his offscreen shenanigans can keep him from getting all the good roles he deserves. As it is, he stands out as one of the greatest performing talents of the past two decades

asarris@observer.com