Plot: When burnout organic farmer Ned Rockliffe (Paul Rudd) gets busted at the local Farmer's Market for selling pot to a policeman, Ned spends eight months in prison. Upon his release Ned finds that his girlfriend Janet (Kathryn Hahn) has taken up with a new man and refuses to let Ned have his dog "Willie Nelson." With nowhere else to turn Ned heads back to the city and into the lives of his three sisters, Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) a career driven perfectionist with no time for men, Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) a bi-sexual hipster living with five roommates and afraid of commitment, and Liz (Emily Mortimer) a lonely housewife and mother ignored by her documentary filmmaker husband Dylan (Steve Coogan). While the sisters consider Ned to be somewhat of an idiot, as time progresses all three find that Ned's free spirit may be exactly what they need.
Review: It's extremely difficult to quantify director Jesse Peretz's film Our Idiot Brother. While ostensibly a comedy, Brother often slips into the realm of drama as well. The result makes for a mish mash of sentimentality, occasional laughs, cinematic boredom.
Our Idiot Brother suffers from a lack of cohesiveness. While all of the performances in the film are strong, particularly Rudd's, I just didn't always find myself caring about the characters. Banks is the weakest of the bunch as career driven woman Miranda. However, her no nonsense persona masks the fact that she's secretly attracted to her neighbor Jeremy (Adam Scott) who secretly loves her too. The problem is that the idea is a cliche and the lack of chemistry between the two actors only exacerbates the problem.
Meanwhile Emily Mortimer while decent as the lonely house wife Liz is an incredibly bad role model for women. Her character is weak and subject to her husband Dylan's philandering. The desperate sad house wife routine gets very monotonous after awhile. Also side note: I really did not need to see Steve Coogan's ball sack in this film when Ned discovers he's cheating.
Zooey Deschanel's Natalie may be the most atypical of the three sisters, a bi-sexual slacker that constantly cheats on her girlfriend Cindy played by an incredibly butched up Rashida Jones. Her fear of commitment yet desperate love of Cindy rings true, and her relationship with Ned is the most believable.
Peretz's unwillingness to focus enough time on the individual relationships between Ned and his sisters made for a rough narrative, where the pacing constantly jumps around. I was surprised to find that the movie was only 90 minutes long as it felt like 3 hours. Additionally, Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall's script is full of stock, one dimensional characters that make the whole movie one tired cliche.
The only saving grace to Our Idiot Brother was the near flawless and committed performance by actor Paul Rudd. This is probably Rudd's best performance to date. His Ned was heartfelt and sweet with a measure of restraint not displayed in Rudd's previous films like Role Models and Anchorman. I found myself rooting for Ned to get his dog "Willie Nelson" back. His relationship with nephew River (Matthew Mindler) was the most believable and endearing part of the whole film.
Unfortunately for Rudd none of the characters in the script come close to matching the fleshed out Ned. Furthermore, the film's ending is one of the most contrived I've seen in recent memory. While Rudd's stellar performance rules the day, it's not nearly enough to make Our Idiot Brother look anything more than idiotic.
My rating: 5/10
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