5/20/2023 0 Comments Watch identity thief![]() “Identity Thief” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). (The character actor Eric Stonestreet does his part too.) They deserve better vehicles, and we deserve better movies, but at least we can look forward to new episodes of “Arrested Development” in May. That said, as is the case with other unsatisfactory diversions, it is entirely possible to ignore the worst parts of this movie, to drift along during the lulls, slide over the half-baked jokes and just wait for Ms. Diana will teach Sandy something, and he will teach her something in turn, and then everything will fit tidily, phonily together, or something like that. Real anarchy has no place in an entertainment like “Identity Thief”: order must be restored, the family reunited, the wild woman tamed. This frenzy doesn’t endure, though that is to be expected. McCarthy slips between the saucy and the demonic with exquisite effortlessness, fluttering her lashes and flashing her dimples one minute, unleashing her inner Medusa the next. The character may be drawn in broad strokes, but Ms. Even so, from the moment Diana comes on screen in “Identity Thief,” sugar-talking Sandy out of his information while she’s slurping a soda, Ms. McCarthy inhabited so brilliantly in “ Bridesmaids,” a movie that rejoiced in messy female behavior. Diana isn’t the brilliant, gender-bending presence that Ms. She is, in other words, the unruly woman, the woman of glorious excess who, with her sharp, funny tongue and expansive physicality dominates the screen and her male co-stars, often by playing off an idea of femininity. Sandy’s new position represents a step up for the family, which means that Diana doesn’t just rip him off, she also threatens his upward mobility. More unusually, the family is almost broke and lives in an apartment instead of one of those movie dream houses that pass as middle-class homes. An Everyman, Sandy comes with the usual pretty wife (Amanda Peet) and cute kids, with another on the way. Diana enters shortly before Sandy is hired for a job that bumps his income to six figures from five. Bateman, but she is the supernova who burns up this show, which was written by Craig Mazin and directed by Seth Gordon. Diana, a kewpie doll with a crazy smile and five-alarm blaze of hair, is the target of most of the jokes, but until the filmmakers put out her fire with a bucket of tears and sentimental slop, she’s also the movie’s bliss. The two become one of those belligerent odd couples who are forced on the road together chockablock with stereotypes, gun violence, visual clichés and cruel comedy. The story turns on a thief who sometimes goes by Diana (Melissa McCarthy), who wreaks havoc on a milquetoast, Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman), by stealing his credit cards and more. “Identity Thief,” a lazy comedy about a naughty woman and the uptight man she has her way with, has no business being funny.
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