“Identity Thief,” directed by Gordon and written by Craig Mazin (who also wrote “The Hangover Part II”) and Jerry Eeten, focuses on meek, mild-mannered Sandy Bigelow Patterson (Jason Bateman, of “Hit and Run,” “The Change-Up,” “Horrible Bosses,” “Paul,” and “The Switch”) of Denver, who works in “accounts processing” at a big financial firm. While his boss is getting bonuses in the millions, Sandy is barely pulling in $50,000 a year, supporting two daughters and a pregnant wife, and dealing with his boss’s undermining attitude—”You could train a baboon to do” your job, he’s told. It’s a very supportive work environment.
So Sandy already has a pretty weak grasp on his own life when his identity is stolen by a brazen, manipulative woman in Florida who starts passing herself off as Sandy, too (Melissa McCarthy, of “Bridesmaids”). After conning him out of his private information with just one phone call, faux-Sandy goes on a spending spree, buying a jet ski, a massage chair, tons of jewelry and cosmetics, all while galloping around in hideous outfits and hugely hairsprayed hair. As much as real-Sandy is floundering, faux-Sandy is living it up, with dozens of fake IDs and credit cards to her disposal.
But real-Sandy, who is promised a higher-up job with a start-up financial firm, truly hits rock bottom when he realizes that faux-Sandy’s spending could sink his reputation professionally, costing him this new gig. And so, with zeal, he decides to travel to Florida, track her down, and bring her back to Denver to face charges, because for some convoluted, sounds-like-movie-untruths reasoning provided by Detective Reilly (Morris Chestnut, of “Think Like a Man”), she can’t be tried for at least a year. (It’s all very ridiculous and absurd and inaccurate to the legal system, but that’s only one of the film’s many problems.)
Faux-Sandy isn’t going without a fight, though, both literally and figuratively. She punches real-Sandy in the throat, among other violence. She’s dodging both a bounty hunter type (Robert Patrick, of “Trouble with the Curve” and “Safe House”) and the lackeys (T.I. and Genesis Rodriguez, of “The Last Stand,” “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” “Casa de mi Padre,” and “Man on a Ledge”) sent by a drug dealer to whom she sold traceable, and therefore useless, credit cards. And ultimately, she’s just looking for acceptance, even if it comes in the form of a one-night stand with rich widower Chuck (Eric Stonestreet, of “Bad Teacher”). Can Sandy give her that acceptance? Will he?!
What’s so impressively bizarre and unsuccessful about “Identity Thief” is not its unlikeable characters; we’re used to that in our R-rated comedies, from the aforementioned “Horrible Bosses” to “The Hangover” to “Bad Teacher.” But those films benefited from a charm to their characters and, ultimately, some kind of repentance that came from within and didn’t seem sloppily assigned to them for no reason. “Identity Thief” can never find that balance, and the character portrayed by McCarthy is its main victim. The film jarringly transitions between crime comedy and affecting drama but can’t get the tonal shifts right, so when faux-Sandy cries about her abandonment issues and why she needs things to make her happy, it’s an impossible development to take seriously.
And similarly ineffective is the suggestion, by the film, that faux-Sandy needs to be fixed by those who openly mock her for her weight and appearance. The writing is incredibly transparent regarding how we should negatively see Sandy because of her physicality—”People like you don’t have friends,” one bartender snipes at her—and yet the movie takes the extra step of having faux-Sandy herself ask those making fun of her for help. What? Why would a victim ever turn to a bully? And why make faux-Sandy a victim at all, drawing those conclusions between identity and criminality that don’t need to be there?
All of that commentary aside, “Identity Thief” fails because it simply isn’t very funny, believable, or impactful in any way. Bateman has been the pushed-to-the-brink straightman for years and is no different here; his wife (Amanda Peet, of “Gulliver’s Travels”) and boss (Jon Favreau, of “People Like Us,” “John Carter,” “Zookeeper,” “Iron Man 2,” “G-Force,” and “Iron Man”) are little more than stock characters, there to smile or sneer accordingly. They contribute nothing, and Bateman’s dry, aloof shtick feels quite old.
This is all in contrast to McCarthy, who seems to be trying hard to make her character even remotely likeable but is fighting a losing battle. You’re meant to sympathize with her plight, to root for her rehabilitation, but you won’t; you’ll just wonder why McCarthy agreed to such a disappointing film at all. There are elements of “Identity Thief” that McCarthy can’t fix—like, you know, basically everything.
