The Last Movie I Saw

Cedar Rapids, directed by Miguel Arteta, has been very well-reviewed by critics, part of the reason I wanted to see it. I'd kind of gotten the impression that it was something both funny and original, maybe even the best comedy of recent times. After seeing it, I'm kind of scratching my head about how its rated such raves. It's a perfectly agreeable little film, but there's very little about it that I would rate as anything more than formulaic. I guess it's a case of generally thoughtful viewers being so grateful to see a comedy that isn't entirely dependent on the kind of broad, low-brow, scatological material that drives so many contemporary comedies that they over-reacted with their praise. The only way this film looks better than average is in comparison to garbage like The Hangover (which, interestingly, shares star Ed Helms as well as the "strangers in a strange land" plot point) or Hot Tub Time Machine-- watched back to back with stuff like that, Cedar Rapids actually may appear to rank with the all-time greats. But I'd be shocked if that many people recall it a year or two from now as anything special. You can easily find stuff just as good, and often better, every night on Turner Classics in the form of b-features that filled out double-features throughout the thirties and forties, and then were mostly forgotten. I can easily imagine stumbling across Cedar Rapids while channel-surfing twenty or thirty years from now and having a vague enough recollection of enjoyment to sit through it again. But that hardly rates as a masterpiece.