Cedar Rapids

Ed Helms, a member of America's Office TV comedy series, moved into feature films as a member of the Hangover team of comic buffoons. That led to leading co-stardom in Cedar Rapids. He's followed a path trod by other bumbling, physically unattractive TV funny faces, such as Ferrell and Carrell, appealing to audiences that enjoy laughing at middle-aged male bumpkins thrown out of their depth to land on happy endings.

Apple Pie for retarded adolescents, this strange American genre of comic male bonding can be simple, mildly-foul-mouthed entertainment, and Cedar Rapids starts out as a cut above the mindless norm. There are some witty almost Wilder-esque one-liners, amusing female characters, and an ensemble of good lead actors clearly having fun as stereotypical small-town insurance salesmen.

Writer Phil Johnston had previously created two short comedy films (2004-5) and a TV comedy (Ghosts/Aliens, 2010). He had good fortune (or an excellent agent) for his first movie feature, gaining experienced production duo Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor. The proven masters of commercial light satire (Citizen Ruth, Sideways, Election, About Schmidt) pooled production funds with Helms himself, and hired experienced comedy director Miguel Arteta (Star Maps, Chuck and Buck, Good Girl, Youth in Revolt) to get comic flow.

Audiences in America's Mid-Western states may find the script an insult to their intelligences. Helms is a gullible naif who's never flown in an aeroplane or stayed in a hotel, and has a weekly sexual encounter with his former primary school teacher and dominatrix (Sigourney Weaver, wearing bossy facial lines with comic pride). Suddenly ordered to attend a regional convention by his domineering boss, Helms must share a hotel room with a responsible straight-laced black delegate (Isiah The Wire Whitlock Jr), who quotes from The Wire. The third room-mate thrust on them is outrageously foul-mouthed extrovert non-conformist John C Reilly, a cad with a heart of gold.

The trio interact well, as roles and actors, and the meeting between Helms and his first "African-American" is a non-pc minefield the screenplay pirouettes through delicately. The obligatory introduction of a female partner for their inevitable mayhem is made dramatically convincing by Anne Heche as a married delegate who lets her down once a year in Cedar Rapids.

Satirical moments, pillorying fake corporate bonhomie, social hypocrisy, insurance company ethics and sanctimonious crooks, decorate the first hour, while a Jill-in-the-Box local prostitute keeps popping up with a promise of a comic plot development. Amazing Race corporate-bonding set-pieces are handled neatly, to create the plausible setting for Helms to find love and passion with Heche, and the evil regional overlord is set up well for a fall from grace.

Then the storyboard went flabby, or the movie's producers insisted on inserting gratuitous violence, dirty jokes and language, racial and sexual slights, silly episodes of incompetent corruption, and a bunch of scripted end-credit "out-takes". The last of them suggests that a sequel might feature the lead foursome as a comic insurance office. Only by an act of gods.