• Review: “The Great Gatsby”
  • Review: “Mud”
  • Review: “The Place Beyond the Pines”
  • Review: “Ginger & Rosa”
  • Review: “Stoker”
  • Review: “Side Effects”
  • Review: “Mama”
  • Review: “Zero Dark Thirty”
  • Review: “Gangster Squad”
  • Review: “Les Misérables”
  • Review: “This Is 40”
  • Review: “Any Day Now”
  • Review: “Anna Karenina”
  • Review: “Silver Linings Playbook”
  • Review: “Hitchcock”
  • Review: “Lincoln”
  • Review: “Life of Pi”
  • Review: “Flight”
  • Review: “Skyfall”
  • Review: “Argo”
  • Review: “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”
  • Review: “Looper”
  • Reviews: “Arbitrage” and “The Master”
  • Review: “The Words”
  • Review: “Celeste and Jesse Forever”
  • Review: “Lawless”
  • Review: “The Campaign”
  • Review: “Total Recall”
  • Review: “To Rome with Love”
  • Review: “The Dark Knight Rises”
  • Review: “Moonrise Kingdom”
  • Review: “Magic Mike”
  • Review: “The Amazing Spider-Man”
  • Review: “Brave”
  • Review: “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”
  • Review: “Prometheus”
  • Review: “Snow White and the Huntsman”
  • Review: “Bernie”
  • Review: “The Dictator”
  • Review: “The Raven”
  • Reviews: “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” and “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”
  • Review: “Chimpanzee”
  • Review: “The Cabin in the Woods”
  • Review: “American Reunion”
  • Review: “Detachment”
  • Review: “The Hunger Games”
  • Review: “Casablanca” (In Re-Release; 1 Night Only)
  • Review: “Silent House”
  • Review: “Wanderlust”
  • Review: “This Means War”
  • Review: “Safe House”
  • Review: “The Woman In Black”
  • Review: “The Grey”
  • Review: “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”
  • Review: “Contraband”
  • Review: “Shame” and “Young Adult”
  • Review: “War Horse”
  • Review: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”
  • Review: “Like Crazy”
  • Review: “Hugo”
  • Review: “The Descendants”
  • Review: “My Week with Marilyn”
  • Review: “J. Edgar”
  • Review: “In Time”
  • Review: “Take Shelter”
  • Review: “The Thing”
  • Review: “The Ides of March”
  • Review: “Dream House”
  • Review: “50/50”
  • Review: “Moneyball”
  • Review: “Abduction”
  • Review: “Drive”
  • Review: “Contagion”
  • Review: “The Debt”
  • Review: “Our Idiot Brother”
  • Review: “The Help”
  • Review: “Fright Night”
  • Review: “Beginners”
  • Review: “Crazy Stupid Love”
  • Review: “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”

Colin Carman

~ Jane Austen Scholar & Culture Vulture

Colin Carman

Monthly Archives: September 2011

Review: “Moneyball”

28 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

a few good men, aaron sorkin, baseball, brad pitt, casey at the bat, george w. bush, hoosiers, jason giambi, johnny damon, jonah hill, kerris dorsey, mets, michael lewis, moneyball, oakland As, paul depodesta, peter brand, philip seymour hoffman, professional sports, red sox, romantic, scott hatteberg, sports movie, stan chervin, steve zaillian, texas rangers, the natural, the social network, underdog, yale, yankees

“Ball Street”

Grade: B+ (RENT IT)

“HOW CAN  YOU not be romantic about baseball?” queries Brad Pitt, as the wildcard GM of the Oakland Athletics, in this talky new sports drama called “Moneyball.”  That loquaciousness, and the surprising fact that most of the film’s action takes place not on the diamond but on conference tables, is due in large part to the snap-crackle-pop of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (sharing the credit with Steven Zaillian from a story by Stan Chervin and book, fully entitled Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis of “The Blind Side”).

It’s an ironic but endearing question from Billy Beane late in “Moneyball” because it was sheer number-crunching and player analysis not romantic notions of luck and discipline that led the A’s from a 5-3 loss to the pinstripes out East, in the Division Series of 2001, to an astounding comeback in the form of twenty consecutive wins years later.  It was Beane’s bean-counting that put the A’s back on the A-list of pro-baseball.  The grand notion of “Moneyball” is that when paradise is lost, it’s not regained but rebuilt from the ground-up.

After Beane loses outfielder Johnny Damon and heavy-hitter Jason Giambi to bigger and better teams, he likens his own to one big organ donor, farming out the heart and kidneys of the A’s to its competition.  But he swiftly rebuilds, much to the clubhouse’s chagrin, after enlisting the support of a Yale-educated economist named Peter Brand (played by the koala-bodied Jonah Hill).  (The brainy basis for Brand is Paul DePodesta, currently the VP for amateur scouting for the NY Mets; he and Beane theorized that walks are as important as home runs and relied on older and even injured players, and their patience at the bat, to succeed.  The script deftly introduces us to Scott Hatteberg, whose career as a catcher for the Boston Red Sox ended with a nerve injury, only to bring him back at a key and victorious moment.)   With aphorisms like “Baseball thinking is medieval” and “Pitches are like blackjack,” Brand helps Beane turn the game into a casino floor.  This approach is not without its detractors: an outraged scout who curses Beane out and the great Philip Seymour Hoffman as the A’s manager, Art Howe.  Seeing Hoffman, in a buzz-cut and starched white baseball jersey, is alone worth the price of admission.

“Moneyball” is entirely dependent on the work of two non-rookies: Sorkin’s script and Pitt’s intense focus. Pitt’s embodiment of Beane is the sine qua non of “Moneyball”; the film is really unthinkable without his cool grace under fire, when hiring and firing irate underlings, and his tenderness when interacting with daughter Casey (a guitar-strumming Kerris Dorsey).  An awkward scene in which Beane is forced to make small-talk with ex-wife (Robin Penn Wright) and her new husband while waiting for Casey to return home from a party provides some much-need pathos.

Sorkin, meanwhile, is the modern master of esoterica in light of the Beltway banter of “The West Wing,” the military and techno-politics of “A Few Good Men” and “The Social Network” (respectively) and here, in “Moneyball,” he and Zaillian reveal that major league baseball is not a far cry from Washington: money talks and walks in both realms.  Is it any wonder that another Yale grad, but just barely, George W. Bush, made that short step from the Texas Rangers to deranged foreign policy?

In the play-ball tradition of “The Natural” and “Hoosiers,” sports films that smartly transcend the track and field for something more meaningful, “Moneyball” flies because its pitch is way inside.

Review: “Abduction”

23 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

abduction, alfred molina, alien, avatar, boyz n the hood, cia, fast and furious, frida, jason isaacs, john singleton, lily collins, maria bellow, michael nyqvista, paris, phil collins, sigourney weaver, spiderman, taylor lautner, thriller, twilight

“Adventures in Baby-Snatching”

Film: “Abduction” (2011)

Grade: F (SKIP IT)


 

“TWILIGHT” STAR TAYLOR Lautner included, this flaccid timewaster of a “thriller” is full of shiny surfaces and zero substance.  BMWs, Apple Macbooks, even the pearly magic of Lautner’s dentistry are set before our eyes like glossy windup-toys headed right off the side of a cliff.   Putting the abs in “Abduction,” a toned but tonedeaf Lautner plays Nathan Price, a high school senior duped into thinking his parents (Maria Bello and Jason Isaacs) are his biological progenitors when instead, they’re undercover agents determined to arm and protect him from impending badguys.

Something’s fishy when your psychologist dissuades you from thinking too deeply about your dreams, especially that flashback of what could be your mother dead on a hotel floor in Paris.  Slumming it as Nathan’s psychiatrist, Sigourney Weaver plays Dr. Bennett, another adult actively involved in the cover-up of Nathan’s real origins.  (Are the “Avatar” and “Alien 1, 2, 3, 4” residuals really that paltry that Weaver needs “Abduction” for the moola because it can’t possibly be the script that called her great name?  The same goes for the equally distinguished Alfred Molina, of “Frida” and “Spiderman 2,” as a crooked CIA agent.)

Something’s even fishier when your dad picks you up from a ragin’ pool party – of course, a shirtless and hungover Nathan is strewn, alongside the obligatory red Dixie cups, on the lawn – only to bring you home and viciously defeat you in a kickboxing match.  “Drink like a man; fight like a man!” growls Isaacs as Nate’s dad.  It’s boot camp masquerading as tough love, and when danger finally comes a knockin’ – cue the Russian goon squad and the dead-eyed villain named Viktor Kazlow (Michael Nyqvist) who wants the encrypted information on Nathan’s cell phone – Nathan is ready to defend himself.  “Abduction” knows its demographic all too well for any real harm to come to its hero, and his haircut, and the film ends, improbably, with he and girlfriend (Lily Collins – Phil’s daughter) snuggling in an empty baseball stadium.  Hot dogs, get your hot dogs here!

If  director John Singleton (of “Boyz n the Hood” and “2 Fast 2 Furious”) musters little shock when Nathan eventually stumbles over his childhood photo on a missing persons’ database – I know my name is Steven! – it’s because Lautner too closely resembled the guy who misses quite a bit throughout his day: irony, algebra, carbohydrates.  Lautner isn’t so much an actor but the multiplex’s version of a chocolate Easter bunny: he may satiate your sweet tooth, but he’s all hollow inside.

Whatever “Abduction” names as its ransom, don’t pay it.

Review: “Drive”

17 Saturday Sep 2011

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

albert brooks, blue valentine, Brando, bronson, california, carey mulligan, christina hendricks, crazy stupid love, crime drama, DeNiro, drive, echo park, film noir, hollywood, los angeles, mad men, nicolas winding ref, oscar isaac, ron perlman, ryan cranston, ryan gosling, taxi driver, traffic, valhalla rising, vigilante

“Auto-matic for the People”

Film Review: “Drive” (2011)

Grade: A- (SEE IT)

 

REVENGE, THEY SAY, is a dish best served cold.  Even colder when served at midnight in the mean streets of Los Angeles, or so “Drive” from Danish director Nicolas Winding Ref (“Bronson,” “Valhalla Rising”) would have us believe.

After the film’s anonymous protagonist (played by Ryan Gosling) sees his friends victimized by ruthless gangsters (Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman), he swiftly avenges their deaths in the film’s final twenty minutes, a stunning finale reminiscent of a very obvious influence here: the vigilante bloodbath known as “Taxi Driver” (1976).  But Gosling, fresh from the one-two punch of last year’s “Blue Valentine” and his comic turn in “Crazy Stupid Love,” smartly eschews a recycling of DeNiro to breathe new life into a young, marble-mouthed Brando, an über-cool Hollywood stunt driver by day and criminal getaway driver at night.

Before the pink cursive credits roll – oh yes, Mr. Ref is a stylist and “Drive” is part music video, part urban nocturne (the best shots, in fact, of the City of Angels at night since Michael Mann’s “Collateral” of 2004) – the film’s opening demands that you fasten your seat belt as Gosling’s driver escapes the LAPD with two masked gunmen hiding in his backseat.  It’s not the high-speed car chase we’ve seen a thousand times before but a vehicular game of cat-and-mouse, a chess game on squealing rubber tires.

We get to know the driver’s softer side when, inside his Echo Park apartment building, he attracts his married mom of a neighbor, Irene (played by the always-restrained Carey Mulligan) and fills in for her  husband, who’s behind bars, and takes a special liking to Irene’s small son.  “What do you do?” Irene asks.  “I’m a driver,” Gosling replies.  “Like a limo driver?”  “No, like in the movies.”   There’s a brief period of paradise – the trio drives the city’s empty culverts, á la “Terminator 2” but slowly and in the sunshine – before Irene’s husband named Standard (Oscar Isaac) returns home.  That homecoming presages the fatal breakdown of virtually every relationship in the film: the driver’s bond with Bryan Cranston as a grease monkey known as Shannon, Standard’s with Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks as a double-dealing grifter, and Perlman’s with Brooks (playing against type as a diabolical ringleader).  When the driver doesn’t shake his hand, explaining “My hands are a little dirty,” Brooks shoots back: “So are mine.”

In keeping with the film noir of “Drive,” Ryan Gosling reveals what could be called the black leather interior of his complicated character.   It’s as sleek and stinging as the scorpion emblazoned on the back of his blood-stained jacket.  The pace of this little ultraviolent gem may not be fast and furious – at times, it’s closer to rush-hour traffic on the 101 – but “Drive” is sure to pick up more than a few passengers on its road to cult status.

Review: “Contagion”

13 Tuesday Sep 2011

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

blog, blogosphere, camus, CDC, cliff martinez, contagion, dickens, elliott gould, erin brovovich, fall movies, final destination, griffin kane, gwyneth paltrow, jude law, kate winslet, laurence fishburne, marion cotillard, mary shelley, matt damon, medicine, metaphor, oceans 11, steven soderbergh, the last man, the plague, thriller, WHO, WW II

“Cover Your Cough”

Film Review: “Contagion” (2011)

Grade: B (RENT IT)

“BLOGGING ISN’T WRITING. It’s graffiti with punctuation.”  This from Dr. Ian Sussman (played by Elliott Gould), an epidemiologist scrambling to find a vaccine for the pernicious pandemic known as MEV-1 in the new thriller, “Contagion.”

The blogosphere will certainly admire the fact that the object of Sussman’s invective – a San Francisco blogger named Alan (Jude Law) – is one of the lucky few completely immune to the plague.  Then again, Alan is a sleaze who capitalizes on the crisis by exploiting his readers’ panic  (Too bad I’d need a global epidemic to gain that kind of readership!)  In a Dickensian stroke, Alan’s last name is Krumwiede (pronounced “Crumb-Weedy”) and he’s as slimy as the infection himself.

Before Krumwiede comes on the scene, however, society as we know it quickly unravels after business exec Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns from Hong Kong to her home in Minneapolis.  Husband Mitch (Matt Damon) is devastated when she and son Clark (Griffin Kane) quickly succumb to an illness as inexplicable as it is fatal.  It’s a cool and crestfallen performance from Damon, shot in the oceanic blues favored by director Steven Soderbergh (“Erin Brockovich,” “Oceans 11”).  Watch as his reaction hardens from disbelief to fury as an emergency room doc tells him both his wife and six-year-old son are dead.  The pathogen in “Contagion” doesn’t just infect; it ravages.  With its rapid incubation phase, and 2.5 million dead in just 26 days, MEV-1 makes SARS look like the sniffles.

To the rescue is a team of experts including Kate Winslet (as Dr. Erin Mears of the CDC), Laurence Fishburne (as Ellis Cheever), and the marvelous Marion Cotillard (as Leonora Orantes of the World Health Organization).  One of the numerous subplots involves Leonora’s abduction at the hands of an Asian family man who holds her hostage until his villagers are given the cure.  After a no-nonsense Winslet is shown an empty stadium for treating the sick, she replies: “Good.  Now give me three more just like it.”

Where “Contagion” succeeds in terms of pacing – composer Cliff Martinez provides an electronic score of blips and bleeps, which sounds like call-waiting on Mars – the film never transcends a purely base and biologic level.  The greatest explorations of contagion on page aren’t as modern as you might think.  Mary Shelley’s The Last Man may have been set in the future, but it was published back in 1826 while La Peste (or The Plague) of Albert Camus followed the Second World War in 1947.  What those two novels share is the alertness to contagion as something more than simple transmission.  Yes, a germy handshake can be a weapon, but it’s also a tie that binds.

However slick and satisfying, “Contagion” is more interested in building (then swiftly dissembling) the puzzle-like structure of a medical mystery than it is in the plague as some kind of meaningful metaphor for interconnectivity and a world flattened by travel and globalization.  “Contagion” will make you afraid, but it won’t make you think, and stripped of the idea that illness is always a metaphor, it metastasizes into some soulless installment of “Final Destination” where you end up waiting on the next character to die.

Poem: “11 Lines for September”

11 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by colincarman in Poems and Plogs (Poem-Blogs)

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

anniversary, attacks, elegy, manhattan, new jersey, new york city, patriotism, rodin, september 11, ten years later, world trade center, WTC

(written one decade ago, dusted off here in memory of the fallen, including a classmate from NJ):

11 Lines for September

 

In Memory of Daniel Gallagher, North Tower

b. July 4, 1978 – d. September 11, 2001

 

Every tongue fell mute that morning

Four jets, an unholy quartet, aimed their noses

At a nation’s market, mansion and military

Poets on their fire escapes, trashmen on their hills

The recital halls and stadiums were mortuary still

A city that raced the sun to its every setting

Stopped.  But once the cameras regained their focus

Once candles cooled on every bench and bumper

Cabbies and curators, theologians and thieves – each and all agreed:

It will take more than fear, and fear’s fierce promoters,

To distract our common cause.

 

* * * * * * * * * * *

The Thinker

 

After the ash had settled over lower Manhattan

Bus stops flaked with photos of the missing

The outer boroughs grew uneasy in the shadow

Of a diminished and defeated looking skyline.

But there, in the still-warm ruins, a rescue team

Discovered the unscathed remains of a Rodin

His Thinker jutting fork-like from rock and wire

Still locked in a pose of private contemplation.

He lay upside down, separated from his stand

From the boardroom where he went largely ignored

From the janitor who, when dusting his head each evening,

Would talk to him as if he was an old friend.

He survived the heat and fury of the fall

The hour when the carpet seemed to drop away

And all the city’s homing pigeons circled above him

Searching in vain for their customary landmarks.

He suffered only the loss of his stature

And the disfigurement of a fist

Still the team hauled him from the rubble

And set him aside where he could stand

In cold remove from man’s distress.

(September 2001)


Tribute to Daniel:

http://www.voicesofseptember11.org/dev/memorial_content.php?idbio=451102069&idcontent=308664590

Review: “The Debt”

05 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

avatar, berlin, ciaran hinds, drama, eichmann, evil, germany, helen mirren, history, hitler, indiana jones, inglourious basterds, israel, jane goodman, jersusalem, jesper christensen, jessica chastain, matthew vaugn, mossad, nazi, peter straughan, revenge, sam worthington, suspense, tarantino, tel aviv, terminator salvation, the debt, the help, the last crusade, the marathon man, tom wilkinson, tree of life

“Schindler’s Fist”

Film Review: “The Debt” (2011)

Grade: B (RENT IT)

“Terribly and terrifyingly normal.”  That was Hannah Arendt’s memorable description, from 1963, after seeing Adolf Eichmann, one of the evil architects of the Holocaust and only Nazi to be executed on Israeli ground after the war, stand trial for crimes against humanity.  It was exactly Eichmann’s bourgeois normalness that terrified Arendt the most.  Even the most destructive of men, she realized, can look like, well, Joe the Plumber.

Every bit the Nazi monster, Eichmann was also a pencil-pusher and a bureaucrat, and as Arendt would argue, in her controversial “Report on the Banality of Evil” from Eichmann in Jerusalem, all the more dangerous because he himself could be pushed around.  In the end, he was a mere “organization man” whose unthinking compliance made the deportation and deaths of millions as easy as the flip of a switch.  “The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him,” Arendt observed, “and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.”

That banality of evil, as Arendt would famously phrase it, is what gives the many face-to-face confrontations between Mossad special agent, Rachel Singer, and Nazi monster, Dieter Vogel, their thrilling charge in John Madden’s “The Debt” (a reboot of a 2007 Israeli thriller adapted by Matthew Vaughn, Jane Godlman and Peter Straughan).  Their tense scenes together involve straight razors, needles, even speculums and they’ll make you want to look away.   The wicked Dr. Vogel (played by Jesper Christensen) is best (or worst) known as the sadistic Surgeon of Birkenau, and he’s been hiding in plain sight in an East Berlin gynecology practice since the fall of the Third Reich.  He has a pleasant looking wife, also his nurse, and he appears, on the surface, well, normal.   Incognito as Dr. Vogel’s timid patient, Rachel exchanges pleasant chitchat with the good doctor as she prepares, with the help of her two fellow agents, to forcibly apprehend the fugitive and bring him to justice.

The young Rachel is played by Jessica Chastain, surely 2011’s greatest revelation on screen.  She was ethereal as the virtually mute mother in Terrence Malick’s superb “The Tree of Life,” effervescent in “The Help,” and here, in “The Debt,” she’s every bit as forceful and effective as the third corner in a triangle of operatives consisting of Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington of “Avatar” and “Terminator Salvation”).  The film occupies several points on the same timeline all at once.   Juxtaposed with the kidnapping of Vogel in 1965 Berlin is modern-day Tel Aviv where Rachel, thirty years later, is now famous for shooting Vogel dead and making her people proud.

But did she?  Is her version of Vogel’s killing truthful, or could the Nazi doctor have fled and Rachel, and Stephan, and David’s account of events be a fabrication?   A terrific trio of actors plays the agents at middle-age (Helen Mirren as Rachel, Tom Wilkinson as Stephan and Ciaran Hinds as David).  They’re still busy trying to rewrite history, and since this reviewer is no spoiler, all I will say is that this triangle, young and old, has more than a few lies to protect.  What powers “The Debt” is the same Hitler-directed revenge fantasy that powered two modern-day classics: 1976’s “The Marathon Man” and Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” of 2009.

Hanah Arendt and the banality of evil is surely a useful lens through which “The Debt” should be viewed.  More accessible perhaps is someone a bit closer to (cinematic) home, that is, Henry Walton “Indiana” Jones, Jr., PhD who, in his “Last Crusade” of 1989, has the last word when he says with a sigh: “Nazis.  I hate these guys.”

Review: “Our Idiot Brother”

01 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

30 Rock, boulder, bum, comedy, crocs, dinner for shmucks, elizabeth banks, emily mortimer, family, film review, golden retriever, hippie, homewrecker, how do you know, lebowski, lisa kudrow, natalie portman, NBC, our idiot brother, poetry, pt anderson, punch drunk lover, purell, rashida jones, shirley knight, sisters, summer movie, the other woman, thespian, urkle, willie nelson, zooey deschanel

“Small in the Family”

Review: “Our Idiot Brother”

(for Christopher)

Grade: B (RENT IT)

IS HONESTY ALWAYS the best policy?

“Our Idiot Brother” answers that eternal question with a resounding YES though it stresses that truth is not without its casualties.  The engine of unflinching truth-telling is the film’s lovable and, yes, idiotic protagonist Ned Rockland (played by Paul Rudd in a Lebowski-like beard and hippie haircut).  When he walks in on his brother-in-law, Dylan (Steve Coogan), in the buff and cheating on his sister, he doesn’t beat the guy to a bloody pulp.  No, he sanitizes his hands with a squirt of Purell and goes about his merry way.  A more apt title would be “Our Naïve and Puerile Brother with No Conversational Filter,” but that wouldn’t exactly sell tickets now would it?

“Our Idiot Brother” is just the heartfelt comedy to break Rudd’s losing streak in a string of turkeys otherwise known as “Dinner for Shmucks” and “How Do You Know.”  As Ned, he brings a 90-minute smile to the face.  Watch as he joins Dylan, a smarmy filmmaker, on the set of a dance studio and, getting his plastic shoe wedged in the ballet bar, explains: “My Croc is stuck.”  Rather than playing the role with a meta-thespian’s wink to the audience, as if to say “How dumb is this guy?”, Rudd plays Ned with absolute earnestness and it’s the film’s recipe for un-self-conscious success.   See Ned bounce on a trampoline while sipping a juice box.  Hear Ned unsure of whether or not he has health insurance.  See Ned, working a farmers market at the film’s opening, give free fruit to children and accidentally sell pot to a uniformed policeman.   Oops.  The arrest means that Ned loses the farm – the organic farm – and sole custody of his golden retriever named Willie Nelson.  “Willie Nelson!” Ned exclaims as his pooch is packed into a copcar.  “It’s going to be okay Willie Nelson!”

Ned is the sort of lovable guy who, when angry, grumbles under his breath “Geez Louise!” and when really angry, exclaims: “Oh wow, I mean, wow!”  Rudd shows all the bygone tenderness required of him as Jennifer Aniston’s gay best friend in “The Object of My Affection” (1998) but not required of him in any of the Apatow raunch as of late (“Anchorman,” “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” et al).  Without Rudd, the comedy’s center cannot hold.

This is not to disparage the three actresses who play Rudd’s cosmopolitan sisters: a predictably half-awake Zooey Deschanel as the indie bisexual Natalie, Elizabeth Banks as the journalist Miranda, and Emily Mortimer as the panicky Manhattan mama Liz.  (Mortimer and the laser-eyed Banks have both taken hilarious turns as Alec Baldwin’s girlfriend on the NBC sitcom “30 Rock.”)   And there a few more strong women to keep Ned afloat, including Rashida Jones as Natalie’s girlfriend in Urkle glasses, not to mention Ned’s Chardonnay-swilling mother (Shirley Knight) and hippie ex-girlfriend Janet (Kathryn Hahn).  Not since P.T. Anderson’s “Punch Drunk Love” (2002) have we seen such an idiot savant – or maybe it’s just plain idiot? – surrounded by so many screaming sisters.  Why are such mighty matriarchies so seldom seen on screen?

The sisters in “Our Idiot Brother,” however, are clichés rather than characters.  Dylan’s wife, Liz, is as uptight as she is uptown and, worried that her son won’t be accepted into an elite elementary school, is covering familiar ground; Lisa Kudrow already nailed this social type in the underrated “The Other Woman” (2009) with Natalie Portman as a sympathetic homewrecker.  And speaking of homewreckers, Ned is something of one himself, but his systematic destruction of his sisters’ domestic bliss is more accidental than malicious.  As anyone with an idiotic sibling might sigh, they know not what they do.

————————————————————————————-

Speaking of siblings, here’s a poem I wrote for my own idiot brother:

Give a Bum a Beer: A Drinking Rhyme

Give that guy a beer, said he

Lowering my window without me

Asking.

Give that bum a beer? I asked

Without a glass?  Into a flask? He’s

Coming.

Yeah, just toss that guy a can

Good beer is like a lending hand for

Drinking.

Our radio rang “People are strange”

The man said:  Can you spare some change? I’m

Roasting.

How ‘bout a beer? my brother said

Right on, he grinned.  Better drunk than fed when

Struggling.

Thanks for helping a brother out

Instead of blind-eyein’ and drivin’ about, you’re

Sharing.

–          Boulder, Summer 2011

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