Laughing in New York City With John Oliver

I forgot to write about my spring trip to New York City with my buddy Peter, so I just wrote about New York the last time I went up there instead. 

But it's not that that time many months ago wasn't worth writing about. I was reminded of it recently when Peter sent me this screen capture of us on Comedy Central (that's me second from right and Peter third from right). The John Oliver comedy special aired many months after we saw it filmed as well. 

It was a little odd. One, Oliver is one of my least-favorite parts of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. Two, they made us sit for about five hours without food, drink, or bathroom breaks while they filmed two loooong episodes in a row. Three, it took us away from carousing the streets of Manhattan, which is one of my favorite things to do in this life.

I preferred the other comedy show we saw that long-ago weekend, the one that happened at 1:30 a.m. in the Comedy Cellar with Al Madrigal of The Daily Show. 

Cedar Falls, Iowa Lures Ed Helms for an Insurance Conference

If one things can be said about Ed Helms, he plays his type well. Basically the same square-dweeb turned party animal that he played in The Hangover and The Hangover II, Helms is Tim Lippe (pronounced Lip-y) in Cedar Falls, the name of this movie and also the location of the annual insurance conference that serves as the center of the action.

This is actually a brilliant concept for a movie. An insurance conference? The comedic possibilities seem endless. And while there could have been more fall-out-of-your-seat-laughing moments, the characters are so lovable that it's impossible to not get caught up cheering for them.

Lippe has never been on an airplane before, so the run-of-the-mill chain hotel seems like a wonderland to him. This is clear from the moment he arrives and hesitates to give the desk person his credit card for incidentals to the Chevy Chase-like moment when he and the gang break into the indoor pool in the center of all the rooms in the middle of the night.

He rooms with a seemingly slimy, but actually much deeper, John C. Reilly and straight man Isiah Whitlock Jr. And he gets in all kinds of situations with a winning trifecta of ladies, Anne Heche, Sigourney Weaver, and Alia Shawkat (from Arrested Development).

An interesting tidbit: Iowa, where the real Cedar Rapids is located, failed to secure the film a tax credit, so the whole movie was actually done in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Although Helms' never seems funny to me in late-night talk show interviews, his winning streak with The Daily Show, The Office, The Hangovers, and this movie is a thing of beauty.

***1/2 out of ***** stars