I've never gone on a business trip, but the idea of one has a magical hold on my imagination. I'm also a pretty well-traveled individual who loves hotels and airports and smelly taxicabs, which makes me the opposite of Cedar Rapids' Tim Lippe (Ed Helms), a small-town insurance salesmen pressed by his superiors to represent his firm at an annual industry convention in the titular Midwestern city. Lippe isn't dumb, but he's about as innocent as a child, which makes him ill-prepared to deal with the debauchery that takes place when pent-up stuffed shirts let loose on the company dime.
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2011.