Our Idiot Brother [2011]

My problem with “Our Idiot Brother” has nothing to do with Paul Rudd, who’s a pleasure to watch in almost anything. But despite his pleasant performance, the movie feels a lot like a TV episode turned into a feature film. That didn’t bother me at first. But at some point, you can feel the life slowly draining from it. Rudd plays Ned, a mini version of “The Dude” from “The Big Lebowski”. Yes he’s a slacking stoner, and he’s not very smart. In the film’s first scene, he sells weed to a cop in uniform (lol). Ned’s also a nice guy. The kind of nice that doesn’t pay off in a city like New York, where his girlfriend dumps him and even steals the only thing dear to him: his dog, Willie Nelson. Following his release from prison, Ned goes to live with each one of his three sisters, in boring turn. His sisters aren’t very nice; Liz (Emily Mortimer) is a firmly rooted if overprotective wife with a husband who’s cheating on her. Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) is a writer who’d lie, cheat and steal for a story. And Natalie (Zooey Deschanel ) is an oversexed bisexual in a committed relationship, but with a wandering eye for whomever, regardless of gender. In other words: this is one big crazy family.

“Our Idiot Brother” is by no means a bad movie, earning a few points in my book for not falling into the modern day comedy traps. The cast delivers, as it should. But clearly, this is a Paul Rudd film. The ending is too predictable and flat, but that too is not a surprise. Overall, the movie does pretty much what it sets out to do. It doesn’t aim to reinvent the genre, and it doesn’t. You can thank Rudd for keeping things afloat and amusing. He’s a gimmick, and yet without him the movie would have been a disaster.

Note: Jesse Peretz, who cowrote the screenplay with his sister, Evgenia Peretz, and her husband, documentarian David Schisgall loves making movie references. I’m not sure this is always wise, since it takes a film buff like me out of the scene when I’m distracted by a framed poster of Peter Sellers hanging over Rudd’s bed, or “The Pink Panther” playing on his laptop. At least he has good taste in movies.

Rating: 2.5/4