Showing from Mar. 1: Identity Thief **

Stars: Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy, John Cho.
Director: Seth Gordon.
Rated: R
Showing: Speciality Theatre. For show times call 292-2135.
Runtime: 111 minutes
Comedy, crime

In Identity Thief, Melissa McCarthy gets smacked in the face with a frying pan, conked on the head with a toaster, run over by a car and suffers a hundred other bits of violent slapstick, and you laugh almost every time. Then the moment passes, and the movie doesn’t quite match up.

McCarthy has been acting for years, but her popularity blew up after her supporting performance in Bridesmaids, in which she relieved herself, explosively, in a bathroom sink. She is an immensely likable screen presence who is fearless at making herself look ridiculous, and the combination of her girth and surprising agility recall Animal House-era John Belushi. In contemporary Hollywood, she is one of a kind, and how many actresses can say that?

Unfortunately, no matter how hard McCarthy tries, Identity Thief remains an unsalvageable wreck.

She plays Diana, a loud and gregarious woman who looks like a super-sized Raggedy Ann doll, with her shock of long red hair and flair for eyeball-searing ensembles. Diana is a computer-savvy con artist who tricks people into giving her their Social Security numbers and birth dates, then cranks out fake credit cards and goes on costly shopping sprees. She’s a hoarder of bright new appliances: three dishwashers, four microwaves, even an enormous jetski she keeps parked on her front lawn. But she picks the wrong target when she goes after Sandy (Jason Bateman), a husband and father of two kids with another on the way who has just got a promotion when the police show up accusing him of credit fraud.

The unforgiveable thing is Identity Thief’s third-act veer into sentimentality, with tearful confessions and heartwarming revelations and Diana’s transformation from ugly duckling into a beautiful swan.

The actress tries her best to sell the poignancy, but her talent only makes it worse, because you start feeling sorry for her character, and Identity Thief apparently forgets it was supposed to be a comedy.