OUR IDIOT BROTHER (M) is the kind of title that usually has me running for cover, figuring it will be some gross out American teen puerility masquerading as mirth.
So it came as a pleasant surprise that OUR IDIOT BROTHER is a genuine mirth maker about a gormless guy called Ned, played by Paul Rudd, who has a heart of gold and a brain without malice or aforethought, a kind of clueless Kent from King Lear.
It’s a bit of a long bow, but the Lear allusion also manifests itself in the characters of Ned’s three sisters who care for him but find him an embarrassment, one of them actually evicting him.
A myriad of amusing mishaps conspire to tear his relationship with his siblings apart but his gormlessness is tempered with such a beguiling, innocent charm that family feuding cannot prevail indefinitely.
Plotted with aplomb by siblings Jesse and Evgenia Peretz with a screenplay by Evgenia and David Schisgall and directed by Jesse, this film targets sophistication and lampoons the politically correct straight jacket we’ve allowed the lunatics to harness honesty with.
Ned is honest, if not always legal, incapable of cheating or lying, and too trustworthy in these times of spin, where the name of the game is to be less natural, simple or ingenuous.
In this way he is more akin to his wine mellowed mother played by Shirley Knight than his sisters, Liz (Emily Mortimer) subjugated by her spurious spouse, Dylan (Steve Coogan), a pretentious documentary film maker, Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) a flighty journo who wants to graduate from puff piece to serious stories but can’t tell the difference, and Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) confused about her sexuality as she is buffeted between a dominant dyke partner and a cult bamboozled boy.
There’s some hysterical support from Kathryn Hahn and T.J. Miller as Ned’s ex and her idiot new beau who has a dog called Willie Nelson.
A layered and textured comedy with a gauche title, OUR IDIOT BROTHER delivers laughs without detouring your brain.
(c) Richard Cotter
2nd November, 2011
Tags: SYDNEY MOVIE OF THE WEEK, OUR IDIOT BROTHER, Paul Rudd, Jesse Peretz, Evgenia Peretz, David Schisgall, Shirley Knight, Emily Mortimer, Steve Coogan, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Janet Montgomery, Kathryn Hahn, T.J Miller, Willie Nelson.