Identity Thief

John Chard

Friends don't steal friends' identities, do they? While not quite the abomination that some critics have suggested it is, Identity Thief is a hard film to recommend to film fans looking for a comedy to cheer them up. Too long at just under two hours length, the makers appear to have dropped Melissa McCarthy in the middle of a film, built a load of questionable on going gags around her, and then thrown Jason Bateman in for the charm offensive. Then as the film runs out of steam at the mid-point, it gets caught in a vortex of contrivances and pseudo serious statements. It's a real hodge-podge of a script that does the actors no favours at all. A great premise is not fulfilled, sadly. Identity Thief only escapes bottom of the ladder status because fans of the two leads will find a modicum of enjoyment in their respective efforts. 5/10

Kamurai

Good watch, probably won't watch again, and can recommend. This actually reminds me a lot of "Bounty Hunter", but with distinct elements of "Guest House" and "The Hustle". It's honestly disturbing to me to see the anatomy of a sociopath laid out in a movie like this, but it does thoroughly example both what it is like to have your identity stolen and the kind of monsters that do that sort of thing. Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy are both top notch comedic actors, but some of the scenes were a little hammy, even for them. A lot of the movie sort of feels like a VERY long SNL sketch where people are going, "Wouldn't this be funny?" and someone always went, "Yeah, put that in, why not?". It's not that it's not good, but it could have been great.