Seth Gordon's wire fraud-fraught road-buddy comedy suffers the same shortcomings as his two-year-old Horrible Bosses, banking on the belly-laugh dexterity of his leads and not much else. A transactional stiff at a Denver financial firm, Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) has two kids with wife Trish (Amanda Peet) and number three on the way, a few too many mouths to feed on a menial salary. Circumstances brighten once Sandy's coworker Daniel (John Cho) poaches him for a high-paying new gig — an opportunity jeopardized by his suddenly plummeting credit, skyrocketing debt and arrest for missing a court date. Once cops determine that petty crook Diana (Melissa McCarthy), all the way in Florida, is the culprit, Sandy treks it cross-country to confront her in the hopes of winning his job back. With comedic actors as sharp as these two, it seems like a most raucous recipe, but Bateman and McCarthy are only intermittently allowed to bang their funny drums. The rest of the run time is filled with boring sob-story sentiment (so that's why she steals identities!) and asides that constantly contradict both characters' established beliefs. On-point bit parts (Modern Family's Eric Stonestreet as bedroom deviant "Big Chuck") are too scarce; groanworthy moments (Diana's cornball Pretty Woman coming-out) are too frequent.
