Identity Thief--Cheesy, funny and somehow emotion stirring..

"That's not tricks, that's you."
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I give this movie a six out of ten. It was cute film, plot was very easy to follow and the characters were very dynamic and worked incredibly well together. Jason Bateman plays Sandy Patterson, a middle-class, overworked and underappreciated businessman working hard and tirelessly for his two daughters and wife Trish (Amanda Peet), who has another child on the way. You can tell his character is a stickler with money by the way he goes over his monthly bills with his wife and is in charge of the accounts at his bank firm. Also, with having a name like Sandy, people take advantage of him and think he’s weak because of his feminine name.

            The bank life is not so sweet when Sandy finds out his boss is making way more money then he should while none of the middlemen are receiving any bonuses at all. That causes a little revolt in the office and Sandy is one of the few people in the firm to leave and start a new firm somewhere else with a much larger salary. And this is when Sandy’s life goes off the deep end.

            Diana (played by Melissa McCarthy) tricks Sandy into giving his information by pretending she spotted unusual charges on his card, which starts off the real identity theft. To show she is a real pro at the identity theft life, she is shown coming out of the shower as the new credit cards are being made on her home credit card making machine and has IDs drying on a clothes line. It’s her causal nature that shows she doesn’t care who she is hurting as long as she gets what she wants. She believes she can buy happiness. When she spends over two-thousand dollars worth of drinks at the bar buying everyone drinks and becomes too intoxicated to stand, the bartender kicks her out and reminds her, these people aren’t her friends. They just like her because she is buying them drinks. “People like you don’t have friends.” Which cuts her to the core.

            You can tell behind her bubbly and colorful exterior there is a real deep and hurtful meaning to her behavior but it didn’t stop me from not liking her at all in the beginning of the film. Since we saw how Sandy struggles at home with the bills and raising children and being underappreciated at work you want everything to work out in his favor. To see this woman waste away money made me so mad! You wish she were doing it to Sandy’s irresponsible boss, Harold Cornish (played by Jon Favreau).

            When Sandy and Diana get together in the film (which I wont ruin for you) you are cheering for Sandy 100%. I hated Diana and I didn’t understand why she was always spinning stories and creating lie after lie. You would assume she would come clean but she always finds a way to try and run from Sandy, and symbolically run from her past, her problems and her reasoning to why she’s a thief. But when this couple tries to kill her for selling bad credit cards then the movie takes another turn for the worse and now innocent Sandy is pulled into her lifestyle and goes on a ride of his lifetime.

 As the movie progresses I became less angry at Diana as I started to pick up on the hints the director, Seth Gordon had intentionally left for the audience to find for themselves. Like her easiness to becoming a new ‘person’ in every situation they faced and her breakdown in the car when she hears Sandy’s children on the phone. I started to care for her more, just as Sandy Patterson does too. He had no intention of becoming friends with her but through some clever writing (thank you Craig Mazin) and directing, this film comes together and puts all the pieces together to why such an odd couple of criminal and victim could indeed become friends for life. There are more gripping and emotional elements attached to this movie, but it’s for me to know and you to go find out!