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Identity Thief: Melissa McCarthy pasts the first major milestone of comic stardom: appearing in a comedy that knocks off other, better comedies, and isn't much good itself.
Identity Thief isn't the lowest of the low—it's somewhere between director Seth Gordon's fairly miserable
Four Christmases and largely tolerable
Horrible Bosses—but it does feel like McCarthy getting welcomed into Jason Bateman's world, where smart and watchable comic actors toil to little reward in high-concept junk, rather than McCarthy dragging a studio comedy into the
Bridesmaids realm. Her next shot at big-studio comedy hijinx comes out later this year:
The Heat, with Sandra Bullock and
Bridesmaids director Paul Feig. You will probably see the trailer 10 to 30 times between now and then; both that trailer and this movie use MIA's "Bad Girls" enough to make you think of it mainly as Melissa McCarthy's personal theme song.
