REVIEW: Our Idiot Brother (2011)
Our Idiot Brother
Rated: R
Sarring: Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel
My Rating: Three stars
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Ned (Paul Rudd) is not an idiot. He is a loving, trusting, humble individual who simply naively believes everyone is as loving, trusting and humble as him. That's surprising considering his family of ruthless women who each, in varying degrees, find Ned to be a burden.
Ned's troubles start only moments into “Our Idiot Brother,” before we meet the women who, somehow, formed Ned into this hippie, Dude-like master of the universe. He's tabling at a local farmer's market, selling his organic fruit made on his organic farm where he's lived for three years with his free-loving girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn) and Willie Nelson, his dog. He adorns a repulsive black-and-white wool sweater, his innocent smile tucked inside a scruffy brown beard.
A uniformed police officer approaches and through a myriad of gestures implies he wants the ganja. Ned impishly agrees, slipping a sandwich baggie between pieces of red rhubarb. A moment passes before the officer announces that Ned, sweet, simple, naïve Ned, is under arrest.
The film skips ahead several months to when Ned is released from prison. His beard thickened and his demeanor as loose as the day of his incarceration, he returns to his organic farm to find his girlfriend living with a new man, refusing to allow him back into her home. She won't even give him the dog.
So Ned, with no money, no job and no home, hitchhikes his way to find his sisters. There's Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), an ambitious magazine journalist who's about to interview a fashionista and get the scoop on a sex scandal. There's Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), a bisexual woman who lives with and off of her girlfriend, played by Rashida Jones, and struggles as a stand-up comedian. Lastly, there's Liz (Emily Mortimer), who's married to a documentarian filming a legendary ballerina. Liz has two children who eat cupcakes ones each week and don't watch “Pink Panther” movies because they're too violent. The entire family unites for a weekly dinner with the matriarch, played by Shirley Knight.
Ned, of course, is in need of a home and money. The women reluctantly agree to help out. Through a series of painful coincidences, Ned is thrust into various situations in which he's forced to choose between being loyal to his family or choosing what he believes is right. That is the film's brilliance and its downfall.
The progression feels calculated and too coincidental. A car service fails to pick up Miranda on the day of her interview, so she calls her idiot brother for a ride. Later, while helping Liz's husband with his movie, he's told to wait in the car. After hours sitting there, Ned is asked by a cop to move, forcing him to interrupt the documentary.
Thankfully, Rudd carries each scene, careful not to break Ned's innocence to the audience. Without the boyish everyone-really-is-good approach, “Our Idiot Brother” would lose all its magic. Ned doesn't care if he meets a celebrity trying to overcome a personal crisis or a small child just wanting another strawberry from his farmer's stand. He treats people as human beings, without underlying agendas. His parole meetings are so genuinely honest and heartfelt that he admits to his officer that he smoked weed with a neighbor boy.
If not for Rudd, “Our Idiot Brother,” would have been lost not long after its Sundance premiere. Instead, here it is – an adult comedy that evokes a smile, not a laugh, as Ned handles situations with naiveté and an endearing innocence. His innate compassion and love, even while all the women in his life, including his dog-hording ex-girlfriend, connive and manipulate others, is inspiring.
Ned causes us to reflect at film's end, with a sweet taste in the mouth, on what he really represents. He exudes love, acceptance and caring in a world so quick to try to change that. He brings about change in others simply by his presence, despite the wrongs done to him. He only wants what's right and good, and he's certainly no idiot.
Three stars
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