Cedar Rapids (2011) NYT Critics' Pick

[lsanderson]

Ed Helms, center, and Isiah Whitlock Jr., far right, aiming high.
An Innocent Abroad, at a Convention in Iowa
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: February 10, 2011

Everything’s up to date in Cedar Rapids, which not only has skyscrapers, but also a hotel with a pool sparkling in the atrium like a blue diamond. For Tim Lippe (rhymes with yippee), the 34-year-old naïf at the center of this wistful, equally tender and raunchy comedy of self-discovery, also called “Cedar Rapids,” the hotel and the pool signal that he’s reached the big time. What he can’t yet know is that by entering the hotel, having guilelessly said no to the friendly neighborhood prostitute outside, he has crossed a Rubicon. He’s on his way to a moral awakening in a story laced with Oedipal overtones and giddy with longing and smut. More