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

Meryl Streep, Oscar presenter (Getty Images)

The Academy has released an incomplete list of this weekend's Oscar presenters. Based on past experience, what categories shall they present. Here are our best guesses!

Christian Bale will present Best Supporting Actress; Melissa Leo will present Best Supporting Actor; Colin Firth will present Best Actress; Natalie Portman will present Best Actor. This gender-swapping return of last year's winners is a predictable tradition; the only thing surprising about it is that Melissa Leo won an Oscar one year ago instead of eight, which is how long ago it feels.

Halle Berry will present Best Documentary Feature and Short. This seems like her level of fame right now.

The cast of Bridesmaids will present Best Costume Design. Because women can make jokes about dresses!

Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone will present Best Sound Editing and Mixing. Only two charming young(ish, in Mr. Cooper's case) stars can get us excited about two seemingly indistinguishable categories.

Tom Cruise will present Best Picture. Doesn't it seem sort of weird that he never has? And doesn't it seem as though he's been fully rehabilitated?

Penélope Cruz will present Best Cinematography. Sure!

Cameron Diaz will present Best Art Direction. This is the sort of early-in-the-ceremony category for which it's perfect to have on hand an early-2000s star whose rep couldn't arrange something later in the ceremony.

Michael Douglas will present Best Director. He's already presented Best Picture twice but he's still a pretty prestigious guy. Practice saying "Hazanavicius," Gekko!

Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis will present Best Visual Effects. And do some sort of Rise of the Planet of the Apes-themed skit in the process.

Tina Fey will present Best Makeup. And tell a joke about how much makeup it takes to keep her from looking like either a wrinkled old man or an acne-scarred teenager in the process.

Tom Hanks will present the "In Memoriam" montage. He can't present Best Picture because one of his own films is nominated (the Academy's actually done this before when Jack Nicholson presented the prize to The Departed, but let's hope they learned from how gauche that looked) and his presenting Best Director would only call attention to the fact that he directed Larry Crowne last year. The only other thing someone with all Mr. Hanks's gravitas can do is present this segment.

Angelina Jolie will present Best Foreign Language Film. What a wonderful way for her to seem benevolent in defeat after not having been nominated for her own foreign film (which was not eligible in this category).

Jennifer Lopez will present Best Original Song. A theoretical actress and theoretical singer, Jennifer Lopez is the perfect simulacrum of a presenter of a music category at the Oscars.

Meryl Streep will present Best Adapted and Best Original Screenplay. "For actors [giggle, stern look over glasses], it all begins with a script," the star of The Iron Lady will inaccurately say.

Michelle Williams--who will be nominated. Who else will join her? (Getty Images)

Tomorrow morning will bring that early-morning announcement of this year's Oscar nominees--with the attention-desperate wrinkle that no one knows how many nominees there will be. Herewith, our predictions, for last-minute entries into your office pool (if yours is the sort of office at which Oscar nominations are the subject of a pool. Ours is not, which is why we're writing a blog post).

Best Picture

The Artist

The Descendants

The Help

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

We know any number of films between five and ten can be nominated for Best Picture, but with The Artist and The Descendants sucking up so much oxygen and so many first-place votes, it's easy to imagine no sixth choice gathering enough steam. The likely sixth entry, if there is one, would be Moneyball--but aren't many of those voters who love "adult dramas" more likely to vote in the buzzier Descendants first?

Best Director

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Mr. Allen, Mr. Scorsese, and Mr. Hazanavicius are clear locks, and Mr. Payne will get in on the strength of his film's reputation. For the fifth spot, Mr. Fincher and Steven Spielberg seem the likeliest (The Help's debut director, Tate Taylor, did not particularly distinguish himself), but the total fade of War Horse's repute gives the advantage to Mr. Fincher for what would be his third nomination in four years.

Best Actor

George Clooney, The Descendants

Jean DuJardin, The Artist

Michael Fassbender, Shame

Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Leonardo DiCaprio has been nominated for all manner of precursor awards for his role in J. Edgar, but that movie's disappeared from theaters and from the minds of viewers who've seen many, many better movies by now (J. Edgar really is uniquely terrible). Anyone who loves biographical films about controversial figures gets to vote one in with Meryl Streep in Best Actress--and the surprise nominee might be Ryan Gosling, who does nothing too special in The Ides of March but who'd be a big enough star to stand alongside Mr. Clooney and Mr. Pitt.

Best Actress

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Viola Davis, The Help

Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Ms. Streep, Ms. Davis, and Ms. Williams have all won early awards, and Ms. Close helped produce her own movie, in which she plays a traditionally bait-y role as a female impersonating a male. The notion that four people in Oscar-bait roles would be joined by Tilda Swinton in the avant-garde We Need to Talk About Kevin stretches credulity--silent for long stretches and chronologically disjointed, this doesn't seem like the sort of role that gets an actress to the Kodak. The narrative around Rooney Mara--plucked out of nowhere in the most extensive casting search since Scarlett O'Hara--seems to coalesce towards a surprise nomination.

Best Supporting Actor

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn

Armie Hammer, J. Edgar

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Mr. Plummer is so far ahead here that the rest of the nominees seem plucked from thin air--an impersonation of Lawrence Olivier? Sure! A fairly quiet turn by a popular comic? Definitely! An attempt at a comeback in a movie no one saw? Okay! Armie Hammer's nomination seems the least likely, but the energy he brought to J. Edgar could make him the one element of the film they nominate.

Best Supporting Actress

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Three movies with huge amounts of apparent support carry their supporting stars towards a nomination, with the addition of Melissa McCarthy, taking the spot that some believe might have gone to Janet McTeer in the little-seen Albert Nobbs.

Best Original Screenplay

50/50

The Artist

Bridesmaids

Midnight in Paris

Young Adult

This category seems fairly open--besides the two Best Picture nominees, the three other top entries are not traditionally Oscar-y comedies. The Writers' Guild of America nominated Win Win, a sort-of comedy also, here, but that movie seems even less up Oscar's alley than Young Adult, a movie in which past winner Diablo Cody deals with her relationship with fame.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The Help

Hugo

Moneyball

This category, on the other hand, has the real heat--it's hard to imagine anything sneaking into a set of screenplays this popular. It's also one of the few categories with true suspense as to the winner--because the real speculation only begins on Tuesday.