“Another Road-Trip Comedy”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Identity Thief is a comedy about a serious subject that has even been in the news lately: stealing someone’s identity and using it to the thief’s advantage.

Identity Thief

In this case, Melissa McCarthy plays the title character, her name is Diana when she isn’t using someone else’s, and we see right off how she goes about stealing someone’s identity and then making her own credit cards in the sucker’s name.

The sucker is Sandy Patterson, played by Jason Bateman; he lives in Denver; his wife Trish, played by Amanda Peet, is pregnant; they already have two children; and there is a running gag about his first name.

So, we see Diana in a bar buying drinks for everyone using a credit card in Sandy’s name, and the bartender says to her, “People like you don’t have friends.”

Meanwhile, Sandy is disgruntled with his boss, and he and some of his coworkers leave the company to start their own company, but when his credit cards start being declined when he wants to buy something, Sandy’s real troubles begin.

The police have a warrant for his arrest for missing a court date in Florida, and Sandy manages to talk his way into getting a week of grace so he can go to Florida, find the fake Sandy, and bring the thief back to Denver in order to save himself from going to jail.

No problem, right?

And let the laughs begin.

Sandy tracks Diana down, but if he thought he had troubles before, his troubles now are even worse, because Diana doesn’t want to go back to Denver with him.

And the rest of the movie consists of Sandy trying to get Diana from Florida to Denver in order to clear his name.

The laughs come suddenly and unexpectedly, and there are plenty of other characters trying to stop them, including two people with orders from their boss to kill Sandy and a very unusual skip tracer who is on the trail of the fake Sandy and who is trying to capture her and bring her back to justice.

So, Sandy and Diana try to avoid the others, have to change modes of transportation for various reasons, and struggle to make it to Denver all in two pieces.

Identity Thief is another in a long line of road-trip comedies at large.

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