Cedar Rapids Blu-ray

Cedar Rapids Blu-ray
Ed Helms. John C. Reilly, Anne Heche
Directed by Miguel Arteta
Fox Home Entertainment 2011
86 minutes

Cedar Rapids is a far better comedy Blu-ray than the trailer leads you to believe. It is presented as another guy in his thirties has wild weekend movie while in fact it is more about a small town nerd coming out of his shell and becoming a better, more open person. Everything works in this quite interesting, funny, and fresh movie.

Ed Helms plays Tim Lippe, a small town small insurance salesman who is too mild mannered, even for the insurance world. When the star of the office dies, Tim is sent by his boss to the convention in Cedar Rapids with the explicit instructions to bring back another Diamond Award and avoid insurance agent Dean Ziegler.

Tim ends up sharing a room with party animal Ziegler and another insurance salesman named Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock Jr. of The Wire) whose favorite show is The Wire. Ziegler pals up with Tim and brings him out of his shell a bit. Tim also meets a cute redhead named Joan (Anne Heche). A secondary story involves local hotel talent named Bree.

Tim learns a bit about himself, loses a few illusions, and eventually becomes more of a grown-up through various accidents and experiences. Yes, it is much much funnier than it sounds.

Cedar Rapids is much more interesting and not at all the stupid comedy it makes itself out to be.

Special features on Cedar Rapids Blu-ray include deleted scenes, a gag reel, Mike O’Malley – Urban Clogger; Tweaking in the USA; Wedding Belles – Crashing a Lesbian Wedding; Top Notch Commercial Fox Movie Channel Presents: Direct Effect Miguel Arteta; Fox Movie Channel Presents: Writer’s Draft Phil Johnston; BD LIVE; Exclusive: Ed Helms Mad Chopper Skills; Digital Copy

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