Starring: Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer and Rashida Jones
Directed By: Jesse Peretz
Screenplay By: Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall
Story By: Evgenia Peretz, David Schisgall and Jesse Peretz
Produced By: Anthony Bregman, Peter Saraf and Marc Turtletaub
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
Rating: R
Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes
Website: ouridiotbrother.com
Budget: $10 million
Genre: Comedy
Release Date: August 26, 2011
Our Idiot Brother has one of those titles, like The Forty-Year-Old Virgin or Hotel for Dogs, that seems like it pretty much explains the kind of movie you’re about to watch. It’s the kind of title that evokes Inspector Clouseau-esque bumbling and people getting hit in the crotch a lot. Against all instinct and reason, Our Idiot Brother avoids most of the images suggested by its deceptive title and instead offers a sweet-natured, surprisingly subtle comedy with a positive message about having faith in human nature.
Anchorman’s Paul Rudd, in Eddie Vedder beard and long hair, stars as Ned, the title idiot/brother, an organic farmer who finds himself in prison after selling pot to a uniformed police officer (okay, that’s admittedly pretty idiotic on his part). Ned’s optimism about people’s motives – he only sold it to the cop because he said he had a rough week, after all – does not diminish on his release, a trait diminished by the fact his girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn) has already replaced him at their farm with a similarly good-natured hippie type. Kicked off the farm and denied his beloved dog, Ned takes his turn living with each of his three sisters: Harried Liz (Emily Mortimer), raising two small kids with her documentarian husband (comedian Steve Coogan); hypersexual hipster Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), unable to commit to her lesbian partner (Rashida Jones of “The Office”); and determined magazine writer Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), looking for the next big step in her career. Ned’s naïve faith in the human spirit draws out the best and worst in his sisters as each are forced confront the deficiencies in their lives.
Our Idiot Brother takes aim at some easy targets – hippie idealism, yuppie ambition, New Age solipsism – that were tired when Woody Allen was making fun of them in the ‘70s. If that were all there is to Our Idiot Brother, though, it would make for some strained satire. The difference is in Paul Rudd. Groomed as a leading man early in his career, Rudd has instead taken a strange, welcome turn into character roles, including earnest Ned. The easy route for the movie would have been to turn Ned into a hippie caricature, but Rudd plays Ned as an essentially well-meaning guy who gets in over his head. The script, co-written by director Jesse Peretz and his sister, Evgenia, was written especially with Rudd in mind for the role of Ned, and it turns out to be a shrewd casting decision.
Our Idiot Brother wisely avoids the same kind of farcical tone that seems omnipresent in movie comedies these days – a technique pioneered by Rudd, Judd Apatow, and Will Ferrell, in fact – instead presenting Ned and his malcontent brood as real, if flawed, people. As the movie progresses, we begin to feel for Ned beyond his existence as a granola, hey-dude stereotype that would have Jeff Lebowski telling him to get it together. Ned’s all-you-need-is-love philosophy is initially grating, but Rudd invests enough sincerity into the character that the movie becomes more a fable of good intentions than the broad comedy the title hints at. As comedies go, the laughs in Our Idiot Brother are milder than the yuks you’ll find in its more vigorously outrageous counterparts, but the movie, like Ned himself, grows on you with its essential sweetness and laid-back approach to life and humor.
2.5 Stars
