A complete waste of the comic talents of Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy. He plays Sandy Patterson, a straight-arrow bookkeeper whose identity is stolen by Diana, a garish Florida woman, played by McCarthy, whose life is built on a series of scams. Through a series of tortured, drawn-out plot machinations, the movie manages to get them in a car together for a deeply unfunny road trip full of strained comic violence, extraneous supporting characters (who knew this movie had so much T.I. in it!) and painful attempts at life lessons. The latter are partly tied to the film’s utter confusion over what to do with McCarthy as a physical comedienne. With the release of this and The Heat in the same year there was a lot of discussion over McCarthy as a female comic grotesque, and Identity Thief vacillates among being a refutation, confirmation and liberated celebration of that concept. “People like you don’t have friends,” a bartender scoffs at Diana early on. Later the movie asks us to scoff at a sex scene between Diana and a hefty cowboy (Eric Stonestreet). And then, as the topper, it gives her a makeover at the end. Never mind Pretty Woman; allowing McCarthy to simply be a funny woman would have sufficed.
