I would be disappointed if a movie called “Identity Thief” wasn’t a bit light-fingered with ideas, and in this Jason Bateman-Melissa McCarthy action comedy there is a lot of “Midnight Run,” a bit of “Catch Me If You Can” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” Maybe even a glimmer of the ultimate odd-couple road movie: “The Defiant Ones.”
That last one (from 1958) was about racial tolerance, though: This one’s more about . . . what is it about? That’s the problem. “Identity Thief” sets up a juicy target — the overpaid corporate tool — then walks away from it.
Bateman is Sandy Patterson. Get it? Girl’s name (meaning several lame jokes along these lines). We open with a slick-talking Florida woman (McCarthy) conning Sandy over the phone into giving up his Social Security number. Soon she’s buying thousands of dollars worth of drinks for everyone at a bar, using a credit card with his name.
Sandy, an office worker in Denver who is struggling to support a family on $50K a year, resolves to clear his name by bringing the identity thief, Diana, to justice. All he has to do is go collect her himself and deliver her to authorities in Colorado. Easy.
We can forgive the silly setup, without which there can be no film, but like many a road movie, this one has a better start and finish than middle. Thanks to McCarthy’s considerable talents — the similarity of the hilarious stream-of-conscious chatter she brings to this movie, “Bridesmaids” and “This Is 40” makes me think she improvises her best stuff — Diana is a surprisingly likable fraudster. A scene in a makeup store where skinny girls mock her behind her back tells us why she steals — it’s the only way she can buy popularity, treating everyone to drinks. And the inside of her home is sadly funny. She’s got a china closet full of porcelain cats. She’s got a table gong.
Bateman, doing an expert slow burn, is an able straight man. Sandy has to keep Diana in his sight at all times as she keeps outsmarting him (by, for instance, having a vigorous sexual encounter, with a fat cowboy, that Sandy can’t bear to watch.) She figures out that they can’t board a plane together (according to her documents, they have the same name and date of birth). So we must have a car trip. Round up the wacky contrivances.
Funny and promising as the first act is, the entire second act is pretty awful, as the script chucks in one tiresome, unlikely gag after another. There’s a snake attack here and a car chase there while three bounty hunters pursue Diana. These villains (Tip “T.I.” Harris, Genesis Rodriguez, Robert Patrick) are never menacing or even interesting.
Director Seth Gordon had a hit with Bateman in “Horrible Bosses,” and they should have figured out what made that movie a hit: Everyone hates his or her boss.
Sandy reports to one of those arrogant finance guys, Harold Cornish (Jon Favreau), a raging jerk who looks like Jabba the Hutt during his lounge-singer years. Cornish, dismissing Sandy’s feeble request for a small bonus, instead cuts himself a $1.2 million check while telling his underling that the weak must starve. “I’m gonna get you a copy of ‘The Fountainhead,’ ” says Favreau. “You’re gonna understand why this is good for everybody.”
Forget those dim bozos chasing Sandy and Diana on the road: Here’s your bad guy, fellas. Yet Favreau disappears from the movie.
That’s too bad, because for a while it looks like Gordon is going to set up a fight between the underdogs and the bulldog, with Sandy and Diana realizing they have a lot in common, and joining forces against the greater wrong. Isn’t Diana’s life just a white-trash parody of banking? The suits went on a binge with the national credit card (the Fed’s low interest rates) on the assumption that somebody else would cover their losses. When porcelain cats and tequila shots are at stake, it’s massive fraud; when billions are on the line, it’s just “moral hazard.”
At least that’s close enough to the truth for a movie, but instead “Identity Thief” settles at the end for cute sentiment, mutual respect and even the birth of a child, all as in another odd-couple road movie, “Due Date.” “Identity Thief” follows the rules, and as Diana tells Sandy, “You follow the rules, don’t you? How’s that working out for you?”