An indy, quirky comedy starring Ed Helms (The Office, the Hangover 1 & 2), John C Reilly (Cyrus, Step Brothers, Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story), Anne Heche and Sigourney Weaver.
The story: an idealist insurance salesman (Helms) is sent to an insurance conference when the other lead salesman dies in an auto-erotic asphyxiation accident. He is told he must win the prestigious "Two Diamond" award. However, his idealism will be challenged by the other agents partying ways, various woman, and ultimately the corruption of the award and his business itself.
Was it good?
No. It has the problem that a lot of these little quicky indy films have -- they are so target specific often that if you aren't in just the sweet spot for who the target audience is then it will fall completely flat. And I am not in the target audience for this film. I just didn't care about any of it. I just didn't care about any of it. I didn't think it was funny. And while I like Helms at times, here it felt like he was doing the same awkward guy schtick I've seen in the past, but more awkward and it just wasn't working.
I don't want to make it sound like it was the actors fault -- the script just didn't push Helms in any interesting directions. For instance, John C Reilly plays a kind of party animal, but I thought the movie would have been much more interesting if Reilly had been the guy who was really going after the award and Helms was the party animal. That at least would have switched things up and been a little more fun.
I simply didn't care about the award, I didn't see why it mattered so much (although we find out by the end), and I didn't get the big idealism about insurance, which is what the main character's focus is. Maybe it's because I'm from Florida where insurers drop people's home policies because of the threat of hurricanes, or because I know something about health insurance, but that kind of naivite and idealism just rang false. And without buying into that, the movie just isn't going to work.
And for me the comedy bits just didn't connect. I didn't laugh. A lot of it seemed predictable and never really hit any interesting parts.
I like the actors in the movie, and I think they did a good job portraying their characters, and there wasn't anything specific about the directing. It all came down to the script for me, which I just didn't connect to at all.
*** AVOID ***
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