Movie Review: Our Idiot Brother

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Our Idiot Brother is one of those movies that you watch with your mouth open and think, "can this be real?" You find it very hard to suspend disbelief, but not in a fantasy kind of way. You have a set of characters in what appears to be the real world acting the way that most people do, except for maybe one person. That person would be the brother in question, Ned played by Paul Rudd.

Ned is calm, collected, very at easy and loves his dog named Willie Nelson. He looks like Jesus with the long hair and beard, is living on a farm and selling fruits, vegetables and weed. Well, he really didn't want to sell the weed to the cop, he just wanted to help out someone who was having a tough week, he was going to give it to the cop, but because he took the money that the cop offered he got busted and went to the joint for eight months although, he got off four months early for being the most cooperative prisoner. The way he acts and dresses you expect someone to come up to him and say "Dude, the 1960s called and it wants all its hippies and flower children back!"

After his release from the big house, he can't go back to the farm so he end up spending time living with his mom and sisters Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), and Liz (Emily Mortimer). Miranda is a tightly wound wanna be reporter for Vanity Fair. Natalie is a care free spirit living with five other people including her girlfriend Cindy. Sister Liz is the dutiful wife to a documentary film maker Dylan (Steve Coogan) and mother of two.

With each stay Ned screws up something. Ned doesn't have a mean bone in his body, but he also doesn't have any filters and doesn't try to read any negativity into what he has been told or sees. That's why you sit there with your mouth wide open. Could you believe there is someone who wouldn't try to impose a darker or screwed up or judgmental meaning on what they have seen or heard? When he is given a lame excuse for a situation, Ned just accepts it as is, no questions asked. It's there where the suspension of disbelief becomes really hard to do. But on the other side of the coin, if Ned started to question and then accepted further lies you'd think differently of him. Then you'd really think he was stupid for not discerning the deceit instead of just having the blind faith to think the best of people and hope that they will give the same back to him. He even goes as far as praising his parole officer for the job the officer is doing. How's that for thinking well of people?

There were a couple of slow points in the movie and a little bit more risque comments and sights in the movie than I expected going in. It was rated R for sexual content including nudity, and for language throughout. It was also one of those comedy movies where the trailer shows you scenes or jokes that don't make it into the final 90 minute cut released to theaters. While maybe not worth the price of a movie ticket, it might be worth the DVD or Blu-ray rental because there was a bit of a lesson in there about one way to view life. When you watch, make sure you stay for the credits as a number of bloopers and out takes pass the time while the words scroll up on the side. I would think a future rental would probably have more of a blooper reel than what was included in the feature presentation.

The Movie Monkey

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