Friday For Your Consideration: John C. Reilly

Welcome to a returning seasonal weekly feature here at Movies with Abe, Friday For Your Consideration. As every year nears to a close, there are a number of actors nominated for Golden Globes, Oscars, and countless other awards. There are so many spots and there are so many deserving contenders, yet some inevitably get left out. Most weeks, I’ll be spotlighting one performance from this year which deserves a second look but might not get it. This doesn’t mean I’m not in favor of Octavia Spencer or Jean Dujardin getting their first nominations. They don’t need my help. As luck would have it, these actors do. I’ll be running this feature on a semi-regular basis until Oscar nominations are announced at the beginning of February, so leave your choices in the comments and I might feature them over the next couple of weeks! I’ve written at greater length about these performances in the reviews of the films, so make sure to read those for a more detailed look at why these actors deserve an Oscar nomination.

John C. Reilly (Cedar Rapids)
Where you’ve seen him before: All over the place, especially in 2002, when he appeared in three Best Picture nominees, “Chicago,” “Gangs of New York,” and “The Hours.”

Why he deserves it: Small-town salesman Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is warned about Reilly’s Dean Ziegler when he heads to Cedar Rapids for an insurance convention, and while it’s true that Dean is extensively vulgar and inappropriate, it turns out that he’s actually a pretty nice guy. Reilly is enthusiastic and funny, making the class clown three-dimensional and sympathetic.

Standout scene: Easily one of the most memorable moments of the film, pictured above, finds Dean swimming in nothing but his underwear in the hotel pool with a trash bucket lid on his head holding a drink in one hand and beeping like R2-D2. Especially in his drunkest moments, it’s hard not to like Dean.

Why he won’t get it: Reilly has had a busy year, appearing also in “Terri,” “Carnage,” and “We Need to Talk About Kevin.” Unfortunately, he won’t get any attention for any of those films. If a Fox Searchlight independent comedy from the first half of the year is going to earn any Oscar buzz, it’s “Win Win,” not “Cedar Rapids.” Reilly will have to settle for his well-deserved Independent Spirit Award Best Supporting Male nomination, where he contends against Albert Brooks, John Hawkes, Christopher Plummer, and Corey Stoll.