Our Idiot Brother (Rhoades)

“Our Idiot Brother” Sounds Close to Home

 Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

My sister and I ought to sue. This movie’s title obviously refers to my younger brother Bill. Who in my family has been talking to Hollywood?

“Our Idiot Brother” – the comedy currently playing at Tropic Cinema – is a family film. Or do I mean a film about a wacky family?

Here, a naïve bewhiskered pothead, Ned (Paul Rudd) has just been released from prison. Although blithely well meaning, his return wreaks havoc on the lives of his sisters – career-minded Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), bisexual Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), and perfect mother Liz (Elizabeth Mortimer) – each dysfunctional in her own ways. His candid innocence confounds everyone from family members to parole officer.

Yes, you know how it turns out. Lessons learned and all that. Ned’s unfailing honesty convinces his sisters that maybe he isn’t such an idiot after all.

As always, Rudd is low-key funny. And Banks, Deschanel, and Mortimer make a good ensemble cast to bounce jokes off.

Elizabeth Banks pegs “Our Idiot Brother” this way: “Yeah, it’s ultimately a story about family and how you don’t get to choose your family, you’re sort of stuck with your family. And if you’re going to be stuck with your family you kind of need to make the most of it. You need to support each other, you need to have each other’s backs, you need to accept each other’s quirks, you need to know how to push everyone’s buttons, you need to know everyone’s skeletons in the closet (laughs), you need to protect each other. I feel this movie is for anyone who has a family, which is pretty much everybody.”

So I phoned my brother to tease him that someone had made a movie about him. He laughed and said he thought the movie was about me. Go figure.

srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]