“Two Bags of Peanuts Up”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Cedar RapidsCEDAR RAPIDS is a pretty good comedy about a weekend at the annual convention for Midwest insurance salesmen that takes place in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

I know what you’re thinking.

“Cedar Rapids is large enough to handle a convention?”

It stars Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, who seems to appear in all comedies of this sort, and Anne Heche, who should appear in more comedies of this sort.

Helms plays Tim Lippe, an insurance salesman who lives and works in Brown Valley, Wisconsin, and Tim is so naive that he has never been on an airplane before the one that takes him to Cedar Rapids for the convention.

On the other hand, back in Brown Valley, Tim is having sex with the recently divorced Macy Vanderhei, played by Sigourney Weaver, who just happened to have been Tim’s seventh-grade teacher.

And yet Tim is so naive that one time after sex, Tim tells Macy that he used to look at her in class and think dirty things, and then he says, “Did you ever used to look at me and think dirty things?”

Anyway, when the star salesman in Tim’s insurance company suddenly dies, Tim is chosen by the boss to go to the convention instead, and the boss warns Tim to avoid another salesman named Dean Ziegler “like the plague.”

Of course, Tim is so naive that he calls Macy when he arrives to describe the hotel to her, but then guess who ends up sharing a hotel room with Tim.

Right. Dean Ziegler!

Dean is played by John C. Reilly, and he takes it upon himself to show Tim how to have fun at a convention, so to speak.

Another experienced conventioneer is Joan, played by Anne Heche, and she joins them for a lot of extra-convention activities, as well, but Tim is so naive that when they all go skinny-dipping, Tim goes Skivvies-dipping.

Tim thinks that insurance agents get a bum rap, but then he discovers how the star salesman he replaced managed to win the Two Diamond Award at the last two conventions, which his boss ordered him to win this year on his own.

Tim is so naive that two bags of peanuts on the airplane cause him to say “Awesome.”

CEDAR RAPIDS is funny, and I give it Two Bags of Peanuts up.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”