Our Idiot Brother (2011)

Ned should be an insufferable character. To just about everybody he meets, that’s exactly what he is. But not to the audience of Our Idiot Brother. As we view the story from an outside perspective, we see just how pure Ned truly is. He is a man who seems like an irritating moron just because he lacks all the more devious traits of those around him. He cannot tell a lie, and to him confrontation is a horrible thing that must be solved through peaceful mediation. All he wants is to live a simple, hate-less life devoid of any complication. There is precisely one actor on this planet that could possibly make this character so affable; a man who has spent his entire career doing nothing but making every character he plays—even the most horrifying—effortlessly charming. His name is Paul Rudd, and in Our Idiot Brother he gives such a great performance that he’s able to elevate the somewhat flimsy film around him. The script does little to earn the payoffs at film’s end, but Rudd does more than enough heavy lifting to make it worthwhile.

The film begins with Ned’s first act of idiocy: he sells drugs to a uniformed police officer. After several months in prison, he returns home to find that his girlfriend Janet (Kathryn Hahn) is living with someone else (T.J. Miller). Even worse, she won’t even let him keep his dog Willie Nelson. Now he must go around living with each of his three sisters: Liz (Emily Mortimer), Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) and Natalie (Zooey Deschanel). In the process he derails their respective personal lives and exposes their flaws as human beings. But in their minds they are not the problem. It is entirely the fault of Ned.

Other characters include the men and women who make up the sisters’ romantic lives. Liz is married to the distant (and possible unfaithful) documentary filmmaker Dylan (Steve Coogan), Miranda is single but may have some interest in her neighbor Jeremy (a criminally underused Adam Scott) and Natalie is a bisexual who is deeply in love with Cindy (Rashida Jones). All of these relationships hit rough patches at one point or another, and all because Ned—in his gleefully stupid way—exposes what they all do behind each others’ backs. He is a man without a deceitful bone in his body, and in a world full of conniving, cheating people who will do whatever they need to in order to keep things “simple,” his honesty (and yes, idiocy) just seems downright freakish.

Our Idiot Brother is at its best when it simply lets the cast sit around and have fun with each other. Rare is the moment when this film will have you rolling in the aisles with laughter, but watching each character interact with Ned is an absolute treat. Whenever Rudd appears onscreen with his goofy grin, it’s impossible not to smile right back. It’s the moments when the film feels the need to move its plot along that it is far less successful. Director Jesse Peretz (with screenwriters Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall) seem intent on tying up every single loose string at film’s end as satisfyingly as possible. It’s easy to wonder what could have been if the filmmakers chose a darker route; what if Ned really did cause the complete and irreparable implosion of his sisters’ lives? Would they truly accept him if things didn’t turn out all hunky-dory? It’s a shame Our Idiot Brother eventually decides to coast in for an easy, likely unrealistic ending.

But here’s the upside: throughout the rest of the film Peretz and company were able to make us genuinely care about each character. If things do turn out well, the audience is happy to see it. Few people in this film—besides Ned—are wholly likeable, but we recognize them as characters who just need to see things through a more honest lens. If they were to find a chance at redemption, they will likely come over to Ned’s side. If most people had a brother like Ned who came into their lives and shook things up, they likely would have the same reaction that his sisters do in the film. To them, he’s just a simpleton who doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. Our Idiot Brother and Rudd’s performance make another argument: maybe Ned’s not the problem, but the solution.

GRADE: B