Melissa McCarthy didn't get awards for Bridesmaids for shitting in a sink, she got them for the 180-degree shift to where she gives a moving tough-love speech to Kristen Wiig. Identity Thief isn't so daring or deep, but it too gives McCarthy a counterpoint to her multitude of hilarious pratfalls: eventually, the tacky con-woman she plays shows her vulnerable side to the mark played by Jason Bateman. Seth Gordon directs this funny, though formulaic, mismatched-duo comedy in which Bateman's straight-laced family man must nab McCarthy, the identity thief who has ruined his credit, and haul her from Florida to Denver for prosecution. Yeah, Bateman's playing his basic Michael Bluth, fussy and secure in his righteousness, but he freshens it with a certain gesture or inflection. McCarthy, with bouncing-off-the-wall energy and commitment to her character's facility for fiction, is at the start of what will be a wonderful movie career.
