The new road-trip comedy Identity Thief — about a guy who confronts a woman who’s wrecking his credit rating — is such a catalog of missed opportunities, it probably makes sense just to list them.
The setup: Sandy Patterson, who works in a Denver financial firm (and is not supposed to be mentally challenged), blithely hands over his Social Security number to a stranger on the phone who says his accounts have been compromised, at which point his accounts get compromised. No tricks, no subterfuge, no laughs — he’s just stupid.
The follow-up: Sandy flies to Florida to persuade the identity thief to accompany him home, where he’ll hand her over to police. He brings handcuffs in case she’s uncooperative. No tricks, no subterfuge, no laughs — he just thinks she’s stupid.
The star: Melissa McCarthy, who plays the title character — and who absolutely deserves a star vehicle after stealing Bridesmaids from her better-known co-stars — gets saddled with a script that subverts her gift for verbal improv by requiring her to throat-punch all comers just as conversations get started, and undercuts her comic timing with overstaged sequences in which she gets tackled, slammed, pinned, violated, abused, busted in the chops with a guitar, beaned with household appliances and rammed full-throttle by a car.
The co-star: Jason Bateman, whose deft way with sarcasm turned Arrested Development into must-see TV, is relegated to playing a clueless, sappily sentimental chump.
