How?d it happen that John C. Reilly?s presence in a movie automatically makes it a must-miss for me?
Roger Ebert gives Cedar Rapids the kind of enthusiastic review that usually has me looking forward to seeing it.* But Reilly?s in it and I probably won?t even watch it when it comes out on DVD.
I don?t understand it. I used to think he was a good actor. Now I can put up with Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen and even Adam Sandler with more equanimity.
Those are some pretty damning comparisons.
Maybe it?s not him [Reilly].
Maybe it?s the movies he?s made since somebody decided he was funny.
There's definitely that. I got fed up with Reilly about the third or fourth time he hooted "Shake 'n' Bake!" in Talledega Nights but the real deal-breaker was Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story in which he played a country music legend in a ill-advised satire of biopics such as Coal Miner's Daughter, Great Balls of Fire!, and, of course, Walk the Line.
Reilly was occasionally funny in Walk Hard and certainly game, but he was the star and there was too much of him--his character was so stupid, crass, self-centered, and self-deluded, such a dumb ceramic mug of a performer, that he became as intolerable as Dennis Quaid's rooster strutting as Jerry Lee Lewis. That move exceeded Reilly's acceptable screen time by about 240% and I haven't wanted to see him since.
I certainly don't want to see in a comedy in which he plays a cheerful lout patting his bare stomach in hotel rooms and interrupting morning prayer with "I am so hung-over...big-time beer shits..."
I gather he also refers to going down on a woman as "eating tuna from the lower shelf," a line any actor with self-respect ought to refuse to deliver.
Anyway, I preferred movie comedy's lovable-slob slot when it was filled by John Candy, had some emotional nuance and deftness to it and was actually funny.
And if that makes me "old school," so be it, and close the door on your way out.
*I found Ebert's review persuasively unconvincing, syrup poured over microwave pancakes.
Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2011/02/cedar-later-alligator.html
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