Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2011: Miguel Arteta’s Cedar Rapids

#80. Cedar Rapids

Director: Miguel Arteta
Writer(s): Phil Johnston
Producers: Jim Burke, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor
Distributor: Fox Searchlight

The Gist: Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) was the guy people always thought would go places but then he just . . . didn’t. He’s been living in über-sleepy Brown Valley, Wisconsin his whole life, still “pre-engaged” to his 7th grade teacher Millie Vanderhei (Sigourney Weaver), while selling insurance to protect other people’s dreams. But now, Tim’s stalled life is about to get a kick-start because, for the first time in his 34 years, he’s headed to a “major” metropolis — Cedar Rapids, Iowa — where he must try to save his company at a do-or-die insurance convention that, for him, will be entirely nonconventional. ….(more)

Cast: Ed Helms, Sigourney Weaver, Alia Shawkat, Anne Heche and John C. Reilly.

List Worthy Reasons…: We had this on our list last year and it slightly fell in the rankings, but one gets the sense by the look of the trailer that this goofy-looking, BlackList favorite is the anti-thesis of Up in the Air and comes from the same cloth as The Hangover — not a bad pairing of films for what could be a career re-launch for indie helmer Miguel Arteta.

Release Date/Status?: A Sundance Premieres section release followed by a February 2nd release in NYC and L.A.