Our Idiot Brother (2011) Short Review
Our Idiot Brother has the same kind of idea as another fairly recent film “Happy Go Lucky” where the central character is a completely happy person content with their own life no matter what befalls them. The central character is nowhere near as annoying as in that one, though. Paul Rudd plays Ned, a man that only exists to be happy and to make others happy. He is honest and trusts that those around him will be just as honest.
At the beginning of the film, he has a vegetable stand, but gets busted for drug dealing when a cop asks to buy some marijuana (because he’s really having a tough week). Ned, affected by the sad story offers him some doob for free, but the cop insists on paying for it so Ned reluctantly says “$20″. He’s immediately arrested and sent to prison.
When he’s released early for EXTREMELY good behaviour behind bars, he goes home to his organic farm only to find that his girlfriend has replaced him. He takes it very well, but is somewhat hurt that she’s going to keep his beloved dog Willie Nelson (and it’s fairly obvious it’s just to be spiteful). Having nowhere to live, he goes to see his family. The family consists of his three (really good looking) sisters and his mom.
The first sister is the single woman Miranda (played by the ever sweet Elizabeth Banks) who is trying desperately to get her career (writing for Vanity Fair) underway. She wants to be a career woman and maybe takes everything a little too seriously. She doesn’t have time for anything else.
The second is the housewife and mother Liz (the decidedly English Emily Mortimer) who is married to a snide documentarian named Dylan (Steve Coogan who specializes in this kind of role) that no longer is interested in her sexually. They have a son that they are raising as… a sissy. That very word may anger some readers of a particular slant, but there’s really no other word for raising a boy by sending him to ballet classes when he really wants to take martial arts classes and then sending him to a child psychiatrist because he’s displaying typical kid behavior. You know. Wanting to have fun.
The third sister Natalie (played by the ever quirky Zoey Deschanel) is an aspiring stand up comedian, bisexual and in a lesbian relationship with a lawyer named Cindy (Rashida Jones who is great in a peripheral role where she tries to help Ned get his dog back). She also makes money on the side posing nude for an artist that has the hots for her.
All of the sisters want to help their brother, but not really. By the tile of the film, you get how the sisters feel about their lone brother. He manages to somehow insinuate himself into their homes in the course of the film and because of who he is, has a profound effect by illuminating the things that are holding them back, hiding or some truth that they aren’t facing. In each case, he is kicked out only to turn up at another sister’s home to exact more unintentional mayhem in their lives.
The film is light and there are times when the central character is painted as SO naive that it’s cartoonish, but the story worked for me. Each sister had an interesting segment that worked towards the bigger point of the film.
That’s sort of rare in films where they interweave a large number of characters. Sometimes you may like the movie, but wish that they had cut some of the more uninteresting characters. They’re all engaging enough in this and at no time did I feel that anyone was trying to be quirky. The quirks were all natural.
I liked this film very much. Even the topics that would have been given a heavier (and darker) weight in other films are dealt with in a bouncy way. There’s maybe one instant where the film for the expected ‘serious’ moment where everything comes to a boil, but largely looks at all of the problems of the various characters with an optimistic eye. Good film, but maybe not for cynical viewers. It’s way too uplifting for those people.
