Our Idiot Brother

                I’ve seen the truth and I understand it now; Paul Rudd is the most charming actor in the world.  Rudd transforms “Our Idiot Brother,” an exercise that could have been stinted and lame, a comedy filled with pot humor and George Carlin’s hippy-dippy weatherman voice into an actual film about an actual character.  True, Rudd’s character is perhaps the only sympathetic element of a story filled with pain and deceit, but his charisma in the end carries it through, and we’re all better off.

                The film begins with Rudd trying to give some weed to a uniformed police officer and going to jail, a development Rudd’s character his character, as with everything, takes in stride.  When he’s out, however, his girlfriend (Francesca Papalia), the first in this character’s catalog of craven’s who take advantage of him, has taken his organic farm, and kicks him out.  He moves in first with his mother (Shirley Knight), a degenerate alcoholic, and then one of his sister’s, which is when the film takes a dark turn.

                Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) is completely career obsessed and her best aspects are contained in the funny performance of Adam Scott, her would-be boyfriend, Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) is a wannabe comedian who cheats on her partner with the artist who paints her in the nude, and Liz (Emily Mortimer) is completely blind to her husband (Steve Coogan, apparently hollywood’s go to British scent, though he could do so much more)’s infidelity and general shittyness.  These aren’t fun characters.  I, for one, didn’t care if all their marriages broke up, and that’s the films greatest weakness: it assumes you will care, and gives no incentive to concern yourselves with these characters.

                But this only means that there is a service for Rudd to apply, and he does so with aplomb.  He’s on screen for almost the entire film, and it’s not enough, his character makes you forgive every other character’s selfishness, because soon he’ll say something else, and all will be better.  When the movie reaches its conclusion, everyone’s happy, and that seems a little false, but Rudd is making candles now, is reunited with his faithful companion Willie Nelson (his dog), and it’s all funny.

Our Idiot Brother: 3 stars