Like he has in Arrested Development, The Change Up, Extract, Teen Wolf Too, and Horrible Bosses, Jason Bateman plays the over-qualified, under-appreciated punching bag in Identity Thief. This time, the incarnation is Sandy Patterson, a name that opens too many jokes up to whether Sandy is in fact a man’s name, a woman’s name, or a unisex name. Sandy Kofax being the only defense offered gives this joke little gravity and provides few laughs, if any.
Most of the comedy comes from Melissa McCarthy, who again plays a hyper-spaz character without shame – this time, her name is Diana (sort of). If you don’t get around to seeing Identity Thief, you could just Netflix the equally underwhelming Bridesmaids.
The title is an obvious focus of the film, and it’s nice that the script wastes no time in setting this up. In the first scene Sandy gets a phone call from Diana, who claims to be offering free protection from identity theft. Here, the film touches on two things: endemic paranoia about having our identities stolen, and our love of a great bargain, but the narrative arc soon becomes improbable.
In a bit of social criticism here, Diana (cum the female Sandy) is large, loud, awkward, and has no friends, so she buys everyone she sees at a bar many, many drinks, has them chanting her pseudonym, continues to buy them drinks, and embarrasses herself to the point of passing out and eventually vomiting. We see the angle that’s being take here: she steals other identities because she’s is extremely uncomfortable in her own skin, but just in case we don’t, the bartender exposits this for us, telling Diana “People like you don’t have friends.”
There’s plenty of emotional assault here to make us see Diana as a real person (in additional to a really good thief), but this doesn’t explain how she’s arrested for public intoxication and assault, yet her fake I.D. passes through the system without a hitch, and it takes Sandy’s (Bateman this time) credit card being declined in an unnecessarily obnoxious fashion to tip off any authorities. To the film’s credit, it tries to explain the problem via a brief explanation of the problems with interstate bureaucracy and jurisdiction, but this too is a bit incredible.
But not as incredible as the solution that Sandy concocts to clear his name: traveling to Florida (where Diana is about to enter a salon), and convincing her to come back with him. In truth, this is a guy who believes to heavily in the kindness of the human race (how, I’m not sure), that he almost deserves to get swindled and feels so deeply that he can’t blatantly lie to a thief (think like grand larceny here) that he must cross his fingers behind his back to alleviate the guilt that’s writhing within him.
There are funny moments buried in this film that soon becomes a road trip / buddy movie a la Planes Trains and Automobiles, Road Trip, Due Date, The Hangover, or Overnight Delivery, but they are overshadowed by a rather nefarious commentary.
Melissa McCarthy is a large woman. This is not a secret. Many of her roles in feature films is as the obviously large, boisterous, socially awkward friend, and this film is no different. But much of the humor throughout Identity Thief is centered on Diana’s appearance. She is laughed as because of her weight, underestimated because of her height, ridiculed because of her (lack of) conditioning, mocked because of her looks, and dismissed as a sexual being.
I didn’t like Bridesmaids because the collective group of characters was pretty obnoxious, predictable, and schlocky. At the same time, Identity Thief takes an attribute and extrapolates it as far as it can go, so much so that the film has no other recourse at its end than to revisit a moment from the beginning that cashes in on Diana’s prevalent issues.
I’m not suggesting that Diana’s (or McCarthy’s) weight is a non-issue and can’t be used to limn a cohesive tale. There are moments in this film that try to emphasize the pressures of fitting in when living in your own skin is a chore, but these moments are often suffocated by a snake attack, a strange, tangential story line, or McCarthy singing “Milkshake.”
What I am suggesting is that a focus on this weight, its size, and its repercussions, would be more interesting if there were some sort of arc, some sort of cohesive theme, some sort of quality, rather than a persistent, tired punch line.
