'IDENTITY THIEF'

'IDENTITY THIEF' (R) (1 1/2 STARS)

Written by Craig Mazin
Directed by Seth Gordon
Actors: Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy, Eric Stonestreet, Robert Patrick, Genesis Rodriguez, John Cho, Amanda Peet, Jon Favreau, Morris Chestnut.

Melissa McCarthy is a complete joy to watch and her comic timing and energy is admirable and contagious. Now that she is becoming a movie star I wish Hollywood wouldn't start ruining this success story with a terrible road trip comedy for her to co star in. "Identity Thief" is a joyless, violent and very unfunny comedy that tries to be an off kilter "Midnight Run" type of movie. I did not laugh one bit during this movie until the last 10 minutes. The movie is wall to wall slapstick violence, bad and improbable situations even for a farce and a waste of a pretty good duo of Jason Bateman and McCarthy. They try their best and particularly McCarthy rises above her material even while being the butt of most of the jokes and the target of the mean spirited violence. Also there are only so many times McCarthy's Diana can punch (5 actually) a man's throat to get away.

Jason Bateman is Sandy Patterson who is a highly regarded company executive who has his identity stolen by Diana who is pretending to be Sandy and maxing out Sandy's credit cards. She is also wanted for assault after punching a man's throat and now the cops are going to arrest the real Sandy. The height of the humor here is supposed to be how everyone reacts to Sandy's first name, making fun of it. Yeah, because there are no male Sandys in the World and no one has ever encountered a male named Sandy (Har Har! Groan!). After Sandy finds Diana to bring her in, the two are chased by a Bounty Hunter and two thugs who make no impact at all as bad guys in this movie. They are just there to shoot at Sandy and Diana or to be shot in the foot themselves. Every character is supposed to be dumb enough to fall for some of the impossible things that happen in this movie and there is a lot of phoniness here.

Then we are supposed to start feeling for Diana towards the end because the movie invents some orphan story for her that is supposed to make Sandy and the audience care for Diana in the end. We are supposed to feel for her when in the beginning the movie targets her for mean spirited violence like she was a female Wile E. Coyote. I wouldn't mind all of this if the movie was funny with all the exaggerated violence but again I did not laugh at all during this insipid movie. The only running jokes I can remember from this movie are the making fun of Sandy's first name and Diana punching men in the throat. Hilarious! Then we have an awkward and very unfunny sex scene with McCarthy and Eric Stonestreet (Modern Family). With that scene and the sex scene in "Stand Up Guys", is this how Hollywood sees sex in the real World? "Identity Thief" has the two funny actors at the center sorrounded by a lot of unfunny dreck.