The R rated comedy game often devolves into an arms race of
which film can present the most shocking gross out gags, the filthiest language,
and the most salacious sexually deviant situations. Already this summer we’ve had
Bad Teacher, Horrible Bosses, and Negative
Nancy vying for the pocketbooks of nihilist
comedy fans. Okay, maybe I made up Negative
Nancy, but you get my point. Refreshingly, Our Idiot Brother is a comedy with an R rating, but it’s not one
that’s worried about selling itself as being controversial. The word “Idiot”
looks right at home next to “Bad” and “Horrible”, but this film takes a
different approach to it’s material. It turns expectations on their head by
making its naïve protagonist actually not an idiot or a cretin, but instead a
really sweet guy. And because of him, Our
Idiot Brother ends up being a really sweet movie as well. In a sea of crass
cinema that is just trying to drop my jaw, I welcomed that approach like a warm
hug.
All comparisons of approach aside, Our Idiot Brother works mostly because it’s just really funny. It tells
the story of Ned (Paul Rudd), a guy with a sunny outlook who always expects the
best, always trusts without question, and who isn’t interested in applying himself
to much more than having a good time. His good intentioned but impractical
approach to life often gets him in trouble and makes him a nuisance to his
three more pragmatic sisters, and their interactions and travails make up the
meat of our story. In an ensemble comedy like this the success or failure of
the film largely hinges on the characters and performances, so that’s what I’ll
focus on here.
Ned is hands down the best role that Paul Rudd has had in
years. The character is an interesting mix of enthusiasm and apathy, he
passively accepts everything that comes his way, but even when things go
horrible he’s never too disappointed; he’s Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski by way of
Buddy the Elf. What could have ended up a cartoon character or a contemptible
buffoon in someone else’s hands becomes an endearing, relatable human when
handled by Rudd. Ned so blindly and purely believes in the good in everything
that he makes himself infinitely loveable and everyone else monsters by
comparison. I could envision Ned fever sweeping the nation; people would have
“What Would Ned Do?” bumper stickers, long hair and beards would suddenly be high
fashion. But for all that Rudd is able to accomplish with his character, it’s
really in his sisters where the real intrigue of the film lies. They are the
characters who grow and change over the course of the narrative. Ned is more of
a mystic entity who works as the catalyst for their change and the sounding
board for their neurosis to bounce off of.
Emily Mortimer plays his oldest sister Liz. She’s the
upscale yuppie type who’s up on all the newfangled parenting techniques, where
to get the most expensive organic groceries, and stuff like that. She’s got a
documentary filmmaker husband (Steve Coogan) who’s cheating with his Russian
ballerina subject, and a son who she has enrolled in new age, world dance
classes despite the fact that he just wants to learn karate. Ned starts her on
her journey by unwittingly revealing her husband’s infidelity, cultivating her
son’s interest in childish things, and effectively sending her life into
upheaval. Mortimer is adorable and vulnerable in everything she does, and she
manages to keep you rooting for Liz even when she’s being kind of an uppity
idiot. Coogan is hilarious dryly reacting with contempt to everyone around him,
and though he only gets a small amount of focus he nearly steals the entire film.
Also, he shows his balls.
Ned’s second sister is Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), a career
driven journalist who is willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead. She’s
been tasked with writing a tell all interview with a troubled heiress, and over
the course of the film we watch her cut a few corners and pull some morally
ambiguous shit to get the juicy details she needs. Ned sends her on her path by
refusing to lie to the fact checkers in her office, thus getting her story
killed and disappointing her bosses. I’m used to seeing Banks in roles where
she plays flighty weirdoes, and it was nice to see her take things in a
different, more buttoned down direction this time. I always assumed that she
had more versatility in her repertoire than I was seeing, and I was happy to
have this film confirm it. Also, the only thing in Miranda’s life that doesn’t
involve advancing her career seems to be her strange bedfellows relationship
with a slacker neighbor (Adam Scott). Lucky for us, that provides the
opportunity to watch Scott and Rudd hang out and trade quips for a few scenes,
which are among the best in the film. I’m suddenly dying for these two to get a
buddy comedy.
The third sister in the family, Natalie (Zooey Deschanel),
is the baby. She doesn’t seem to have much of a career aside from being a bad
standup comic and a nude model, and she’s struggling with being a sometimes lesbian,
sometimes smarmy artist screwing cheat. Ned once again makes a nuisance of
himself by revealing said transgressions. Natalie and her girlfriend (Rashida
Jones) are probably the least interesting characters in the film, but Deschanel
and Jones are charming enough to keep you from zoning out during their
relationship troubles. Jones especially is able to take a character that’s
pretty dry on the page and make her fun, most noticeably in a later scene where
she’s allowed to involve herself in some mischief and freak out a bit.
Mention should also be made of Kathryn Hahn and T.J. Miller,
who play Ned’s ex-girlfriend Janet and her new boyfriend Bobby accordingly. Janet
is a hippy pacifist who lives and works on a farming cooperative and who always
projects a benevolent disposition. Really, she’s a vindictive bitch just
underneath the surface though. Watching Janet and Ned verbally spar as she
tries to do everything she can to screw him over but still appear as if she’s
on a moral high ground was absolutely hysterical, and much of the success is
because of the straight manner in which Hahn plays the character. Bobby, for
his part, is the real deal when it comes to burned out hippies, and Miller
plays the dim bulb as a near caricature. Despite Hahn playing things straight
being the right choice for her character, I would say that Miller going big for
his was the right choice as well. He’s never in the film enough that you really
need to buy him as a real person, and a lot of the belly laughs come from his ridiculous
dumb guy act. And the unlikely relationship he develops with Ned over the
course of the battle for custody of Willie Nelson ended up being a lot of what
made this movie so sweet and heart warming. “Just a couple of guys and a dog
making candles” could be a mantra ten years from now.
A lot of Our Idiot
Brother’s humor comes from tearing into the left, and much of it the upper
class, preachy left at that. But the film never gets to the point where it
feels like anyone’s lifestyle is being viciously attacked. Though most of these
characters have their exploitable foibles, they each end up being redeemable
and even likable in the end. And though Our
Idiot Brother is mostly just shooting for laughs, the very nature of the
Ned character adds a welcome layer of subtext as well. We see Ned as being an
idiot, but upon closer inspection it might just be the rest of us who have it
wrong. Watching how Ned reacts to his problems juxtaposed with the way his
sisters react to theirs offers a window into each character that gives us a more
open and revealing vision of them than we would have gotten otherwise. This all
may sound like rather obvious moralizing, but it works because it isn’t
preachy, it doesn’t get shoved in our face. The characters just behave as
themselves, and the lessons we learn from them naturally flow from that. Our Idiot Brother gets a little deep,
but never so much that it ruins the party. And I think that’s the way Ned would
want it.
