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SUNDANCE 2011

Sundance 2011: Video Review of Ed Helms Comedy 'Cedar Rapids'

by Alex Billington
January 24, 2011

That was super awesome! The last world premiere we attended last night at Sundance 2011 was for Fox Searchlight's newest comedy Cedar Rapids, directed by Miguel Arteta, and starring Ed Helms as a small town insurance agent who takes the first trip of his life to the "big city" of Cedar Rapids. It also stars John C. Reilly, Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Alia Shawkat. It's a hilarious film wrapped around a rather sweet story about friendship and morality, but I didn't love it that much. After the screening Peter of SlashFilm, FS.net's Ethan and I recorded a quick video blog talking about our thoughts on the film. Fire that up below!

A naive Midwesterner insurance agent travels to a big-city convention. Watch the first official trailer here!

Cedar Rapids is directed by Puerto Rican filmmaker Miguel Arteta, of indie flicks Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl and Youth in Revolt previously. The screenplay was written by newcomer Phil Johnston, of A Thousand Words, Flightless Birds and Ghosts/Aliens previously. Fox Searchlight produced and is distributing the film, which will be premiering at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Cedar Rapids will then hit limited theaters on February 11th after the fest. It's a good comedy worth seeing especially if you enjoy any of the actors in it.

Filed under Opinions, Sundance 11, To Watch

From around the web:

Voice of Reason

Sheeeeee-it, I am indeed looking forward to this. Just hate how over-hyped these movies can get and how gradually revealing commercials can completely take the fun out of comedies after the first week of release.
lane

Hey guys, I really do like your site and writing. But what prompts you to do these video reviews? If it's for efficiency of time or just because you think it's fun, that's cool. But you're much better writers than you are video journalists. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but you're just better on paper. Shaky-cam going around a room, natural fumbles of conversation, etc... it's not very dignified for a site that is very respectable on the whole.
- http://www.firstshowing.net Alex Billington
  
  Thanks for the comments, but I have to explain so you understand. It's extremely hard to cover Sundance and write reviews non-stop, especially when trying to run the site and keep up with regular news as well (since I do pretty much everything to maintain it). We barely have time to sleep and eat during the festival and every moment I can, I have my laptop out to write, but it's VERY hard for us to always write reviews non-stop and also actually survive during the fest. We'll be writing more reviews when we can, but these videos are the quickest ways we can voice our opinion and get it posted before its days late. Plus, we've found most people do enjoying watching the videos instead, but I do like to write reviews when I've got a strong opinion on a film, it's just a huge challenge to find the time during a non-stop 10 day festival like this.
Anonymous

i love the entire cast and the premise behind the movie - so, this is one i've been looking forward to for a long time.
Anonymous

ethan - one of the reasons i WANT to see this is due to JCR "out of control" humor. he does it so well, i wouldn't consider that a negative.
- http://twitter.com/Ethan_Anderton Ethan Anderton
  
  Don't get me wrong. It's still very funny. But it's nothing we haven't seen before.
  - Anonymous
    
    i see what you're saying...........thanks for the response!