By Jason Adams, MyNewPlaidPants

You know what’s funny? Money problems! Nothing like a good personal financial disaster to tickle the funny bone. Or at least that’s what the makers of Identity Thief are hoping. Melissa McCarthy plays Diane, a chipmunk cheeked sociopath with a head of Annie curls atop no soul, while Jason Bateman is Sandy (that’s a girl’s name!), the Bland Normal Guy With Hot Wife whose life she destroys in order to quench her unquenchable commercialist thirst. Listen, if you ask me Melissa McCarthy can make anything from walking down stairs to eating ribs a laugh riot – she is an amazing physical comedienne, with total control over how she is read by the camera; she can go from dumpy to lovely with a twist of her elbows. Beyond that, she’s a fine actress too, and when the script decides to sell us on a hint of this woman’s humanity McCarthy sells it.

The movie around her though, it’s not doing anybody any favors. For one I don’t really get the Jason Bateman thing – I guess the befuddled everyman is a time-honored tradition, and McCarthy’s big schtick needs that dynamic to play off of. I just… well I find him so boring I don’t have anything to say about him. Except for that. But it’s the limp 80s throw-back feeling to the whole enterprise that’s dragging it down – there are like a dozen people chasing these characters across country and the movie doesn’t even seem to care why they are there, so why should we? The saddest thing about this is its from the director of the wonderful Donkey Kong documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, which everybody should just go watch instead.

Also out today is Steven Soderbergh’s pharmaceutical thriller Side Effects, wherein Rooney Mara’s depression wreaks havoc on her relationships with her husband (played by Channing Tatum) and her therapist (played by Jude Law). Why anybody who has relationships with dudes that look like Channing Tatum and Jude Law should need medication for depression is beyond me – I might need pills for a sex drive that’s gone out of control maybe, but not depression. Also hanging around in sexy librarian drag is Catherine Zeta-Jones, purring at the sidelines. The movie’s too frosty by half, even with a pile up of genre extravagances – everybody needed to let down their librarian buns and boil up some bunny rabbits.

And finally, what better way to cap off the weekend’s flicks than with Top Gun’s 3D re-release, of all things. Tom Cruise’s 1986 smash about jet fighters in tighty whities and the very large woman who love them (preferably while blue-lit curtains blow in the background and the sweet sounds of lite FM fill the air) has gotten the 3D treatment, which is worth it alone to see how that volleyball scene pops off the screen. I’ll be your wingman anytime, Iceman.

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