Our Idiot Brother

There is this inverse correlation with movies. The simpler a movie is the harder it is to get made. But one of the hallmarks of quality is often simplicity. Every year studios make billion dollar movies that are terrible, and yet someone else can spend almost nothing and make something better. It’s madness. How can it be easier to get something made that’s more expensive and ultimately awful than it would be to make something cheap, simple, and great? These are rules that exist only in some weird alternate dimension, at the nexus of art and commerce.

“Our Idiot Brother,” could not be a simpler movie based on a simple premise, and yet through uniqueness and outstanding performances it is incredibly effective. Paul Rudd stars, along with an amazingly well balanced cast, as a guy who is so naïve and trusting that it frequently gets him into trouble. Ultimately the character doesn’t change but rather the audience’s perception of him does, and we appreciate his unique perspective. After getting kicked out of his house he ends up living with each one of his three sisters and sequentially messes things up for each one. The success of the film is in having a compelling protagonist. It’s his lack of complexity which is endearing. Throughout the whole film he wants only one thing, and that’s to get his dog back from his ex-girlfriend. This film works because of the cast. Each actor is better then the next. It’s also a really funny movie in addition to being very sweet.

It’s so refreshing, which is ultimately frustrating for a regular moviegoer. Because this caliber of movie should be common place, it should be the norm. It shouldn’t be extraordinary, but rather perfectly ordinary in every way. In fact there was a time, before CGI was cheap and before studio executives were all trying to steal money from tweens, when most movies were smart character driven films made for an audience of adults. This is a good movie and if you pay money to see it instead of seeing “Transformers 9: Rise of the Boner-bots,” or Kevin James in some piece of garbage, maybe one day there will be more of this kind of movie and less of that kind.