After the police tell him that it will take up to a year to solve the case, Sandy embarks on a cross-country road trip to find her and clear his name.

In Denver, a man named Sandy Patterson is tricked into buying phony identity theft protection from con artist Diana over the phone and he reveals all of his personal information.

At work, after clashing with his boss Harold Cornish, Sandy receives a call mentioning that he has an appointment at a salon in Florida.

The pair scuffle; before Sandy can handcuff her, criminals Marisol and Julian burst in, angry that Diana gave Paolo bad credit cards.

For gas money, the pair con an accounts processor and steal Cornish's identity to create new credit cards.

The family visits Diana in prison, and Sandy presents her with a birth certificate that reveals her real name as Dawn Budgie.

The film was first conceived as a project with two male leads, but that changed when Bateman saw McCarthy in Bridesmaids and pushed for her to star alongside him.

Scenes were also filmed on Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta, at The Colonnade restaurant on Cheshire Bridge Road in Morningside, and at Perimeter Mall.

The website's consensus reads: ""Identity Thief's few laughs are attributable to Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman, who labor mightily to create a framework for the movie's undisciplined plotline".

She is riveting in simply-penned moments of remorse and confession, adding tearful depth to her ace timing and formidable physical comedy.

"[17] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2/4 and wrote: "It wants to be "Midnight Run" meets "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," but it carries little of the dramatic heft and real-world semi-plausibility of those much superior efforts."

"[18] Bob Mondello for NPR described the film as "Two Hours Stolen", calling it "a catalog of missed opportunities", and "uninspired trudge of a road movie".

Mondello particularly criticizes the script for wasting the talented lead performers, setting up Bateman as stupid and dull, while subverting McCarthy's improvisational skills and undercutting her comic timing with interruptions.

[19] James Berardinelli of ReelViews.com gave the film 1/4 and wrote: "This feels a lot like some of the recent, unwatchable Adam Sandler offerings: boorish, unfunny comedy colliding with saccharine, quasi-dramatic filler."

"[20] Dana Stevens at Slate.com considers the implications of the “brazenly grotesque" character that McCarthy plays and how it is an uneasy balance between feminist trailblazing and preservation of stereotypes.

Stevens would be more willing to forgive the film for "its overfamiliar comic setups and shameless gag-recycling if the movie’s second half didn’t make such an abrupt about-face from soliciting our revulsion to begging for our pity.