Miguel Arteta
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Ramírez is the one who’s stretching out of his comfort zone here, but it never feels that way; the criminal vibe he channeled in the likes of “Wasp Network” and “Point Break” is refashioned into a conspiratorial dad energy that carries the movie’s biggest laughs (especially when it leads him toward “Meet the Parents” degrees of Ben Stiller body harm).
Home Alone (1990)
Directed by Chris Columbus
influenced Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014)
Plot Visuals Themes
After a rotten day at school, Alexander makes a “Big”/“Home Alone”-like wish that his family members have a bad day, too.
From oversleeping the next morning — a John Hughes ploy right out of the “Home Alone” playbook — the family dashes headlong into a series of mini-disasters from dead car batteries to baby shenanigans and blown career opportunities.
Some are in the style of the E.T.- Drew Barrymore closet confrontation; others are reminiscent of the "Home Alone" Macaulay Culkin scream.
In fact, it’s somewhat refreshing to see a family film that, while containing no shortage of the adolescent, gross-out humor that’s been a staple of kids’ films since “Home Alone,” feels downright small and devoid of the kind of outrageous, big-budget set pieces normally required for a major motion picture these days.
The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)
Directed by Judd Apatow
influenced Cedar Rapids (2011)
Themes Plot Characters
Though not as uproarious as “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” director Miguel Arteta’s consistently entertaining white-collar laffer could do for Helms what that film did for Steve Carell, albeit on a much smaller commercial scale.
Ed Helms, taking a break from The Office, channels his fellow sitcom cast-mate Steve Carrell from The 40-Year-Old Virgin here, and comes up with a similar character.
At the very least, it’s not going to make Helms an overnight star like “ The 40-Year-Old Virgin ” did for his fellow “Office” co-star Steve Carell , but while “Cedar Rapids” is never as funny as you might expect, there are just enough laughs scattered throughout its brisk runtime that it's not a complete letdown.
But a more apt comparison is to "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."
PARK CITY -– (Premieres) Ed Helms lands a sturdy showcase for his trademark awkwardness and nerdy charms in "Cedar Rapids," a kind of delayed coming-of-age comedy about a sheltered innocent that in many ways recalls "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," the big-screen breakout of Helms' co-star from "The Office," Steve Carell.
Essentially, he’s Steve Carell from The 40-Year-Old Virgin, except that he sleeps with his seventh-grade teacher (Sigourney Weaver).
Those unfamiliar with the Dostoevsky might be reminded of the more recent Youth in Revolt, in which sometime Eisenberg doppelganger Michael Cera plays a shy young man who invents a troublemaking alter ego in order to attract the girl of his dreams.
We can’t help but wonder if Eisenberg, for a while in competition with the younger Michael Cera for roles as the chic-geek, signed on to chase that actor’s ignored success in 2009’s Youth in Revolt.
Eisenberg's excellent as his own bad-news double in The Double, playing a more unsettling doppelgänger than Cera managed in Youth in Revolt, which involved a tricked-up mustache and too-cute French name.
Cera’s ongoing campaign to muss up his geeky persona began a few years ago with Youth in Revolt (2009), in which he played both a nerd and his suave alter ego: exactly what Eisenberg is called on to do here.
Don't expect this pic to start a nationwide trend of Yes Days any more than 2011's Hall Pass inspired a legion of wives to give their man-child husbands holidays from their wedding vows.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)
Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
influenced by Youth in Revolt (2009)
But (for its first half anyway) “Me and Earl” also reminded me of some of my favorite, dryly whimsical Sundance movies like “Submarine” (2011) and “Youth in Revolt” (2010).
It’s a Jim Carrey sort of premise, warping Yes Man (itself kind of a spin on Liar Liar’s compulsory character trait) into a Nickelodeon-esque kids-run-the-world movie.
Liz, Shaun and Ed the best friend have a relationship not unlike the characters played by Jennifer Aniston , John C. Reilly and Tim Blake Nelson in " The Good Girl " (2002).
Granted, this is a movie based on a kids’ book, not a rethinking of “Apocalypse Now.”
The next few hours alone will see people get arrested, parents wind up in the hospital, and a prepubescent child paraphrase “Apocalypse Now.” That’s one thing American kids movies have always understood all too well: When it comes to parenting, keeping the peace is always worth its price in chaos.
From there, you can pinpoint the type of fuzzy messaging that’ll await the family’s eventual endgame, but first a trip to magic mountain, driving through a carwash with the windows down, and an elaborately staged water balloon fight shot like a sequence from “Apocalypse Now.” It’s unspooled in rapid succession as to not give any of the characters a chance to breathe, because in this technology fueled landscape where films compete with iPads, YouTubers playing “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” and “Minecraft,” things can’t lag.
Moneyball (2011)
Directed by Bennett Miller
influenced Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014)
He has an older brother named Anthony ( Dylan Minnette ) and an older sister named Emily ( Kerris Dorsey , so sweet as Brad Pitt's daughter in " Moneyball "), as well as a new baby sibling.
Dylan Minnette (2013's " Prisoners ") and Kerris Dorsey (2011's " Moneyball ") amicably round out the Cooper clan as older brother and sister Anthony and Emily, both of them finding perspective in the things they have spent the day worrying about.
Dorsey, who played Brad Pitt’s daughter in Moneyball, steals her scenes as a driven thespian willing to do anything to make sure the show must go on.
Like the classic Hollywood dumb blonde who laughs all the way to the bank – from Judy Holliday to Goldie Hawn to Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde – Cera knows how to sell his awkward naïf to a fare-thee-well.
Cast members Chris and Paul Wietz, wrote Antz and American Pie , with Paul directing the latter film while his brother produced.
The other co-star, Chris Weitz, is also half of the writing and directing team (with brother Paul, who also appears in Chuck & Buck as an actor thinly disguised as Chuck performing in a play called Hank & Frank written by Buck) responsible for writing and directing American Pie and writing Antz and the upcoming Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.
But there’s more to this “Yes Day” than a chance for the kids to blow off some steam and get it all out of their system like some Nickelodeon movie remake of The Purge .
Like an innocuous kid version of “The Purge,” Miguel Arteta’s “Yes Day” imagines an annual 24-hour holiday of lawlessness.
That idea has legs beyond what's on screen here; "The Bucket List" was once just a movie, too.
The Phoenician Scheme (2025)
Directed by Wes Anderson
influenced by Youth in Revolt (2009)
Characters
…but their inevitable union gives the actor some of his best material since 2010’s Youth in Revolt.
In a smart move designed to deal with shooting in the cramped confines of the canyon, and one that paid off, Boyle used two cinematographers — Anthony Dod Mantle, who worked with the director on "Slumdog," and Enrique Chediak ( "Charlie St. Cloud," "The Good Girl") — equipped with three types of cameras to get the effect he wanted.
The Kings of Summer (2013)
Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts
influenced Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014)
As her tight-shipped boss Nina, Megan Mullally (2013's " The Kings of Summer ") is so high-strung and funny it is a shame she only has a few minutes of screen time in the first half before disappearing entirely.
The result is a deliciously sardonic yet heartfelt film that emerges from a sea of adolescent angst with as much charm as such recent praiseworthy fare as Terry Zwigoff's Ghost Worldand Miguel Arteta's Youth in Revolt.