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Colin Carman

~ Jane Austen Scholar & Culture Vulture

Colin Carman

Tag Archives: family

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

Review: “Beginners”

17 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

beginners, christopher plummer, closet, comedy, ewan mcgregor, family, freud, gay, goran visnjic, gospel, jack russell terrier, mary page keller, me and you and everyone we know, melanie laurent, miranda july, no one belongs here more than you, the future, the sound of music, thumbsucker, walter kirn

“In Bloom”

Movie Review: “Beginners”

Grade: A- (SEE IT)

IN THE BEGINNING was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God had a Son, and God said: “Son, I’m gay.”  This is the gospel according to Mike Mills’ new film, “Beginners,” inspired in part by the director’s own relationship with his father, Paul, who died of cancer in 2004 shortly after coming out of the closet.   Paul (or “Hal” as he’s known in Mills’ film) is played sensitively and memorably – Oscar voters take note! – by 81-year-old veteran actor Christopher Plummer.  That’s right, Christopher Plummer as in Captain Georg von Trapp in 1965’s “The Sound of Music” and pretty much every film since then.  What lends “Beginners” its charm is the smiling spryness Plummer brings to the role of a septuagenarian essentially reborn as the gay man he never got to be.  We see him, shirt unbuttoned, strolling a dance floor packed with younger men, and later, calling his son for some social cues.  “Oliver, they had some wonderfully loud music in the club tonight,” he informs him over the phone, “What kind of music is that?”  His son, in bed, replies reticently: “Probably house music.”  “Okay,” says Plummer, chuckling to himself as he writes this down in case he forgets, “House music.”

As Mills’ fictional stand-in, Oliver (played by Ewan McGregor) is a kind-hearted Los Angelino who inherits his father’s Jack Russell terrier named Arthur (played by Cosmo) after his dad dies at age 75.  Since the film is told nonchronologically, we’re sometimes given endings before beginnings, which keeps the memories of Oliver’s deceased parents alive and, well, amusing from start of finish.  In one flashback, a young Oliver is taken to an art museum by his eccentric mother Georgia (Mary Page Keller).  She’s asked to leave after imitating the geometric designs on display.  “What?” she asks her young son, “I’m not allowed to interact with the art?”  Now flash forward to the modern day where Oliver meets Anna (the ravishing Mélanie Laurent) at a costume party where Oliver, with Arthur in tow, is dressed as the good Viennese doctor, Sigmund Freud.  A mute Anna has laryngitis and communicates only through pen and paper.  Playing the analysand, she sprawls out on the sofa before him.  “I guess we should begin with your mother,” Oliver jokes.  A relationship soon blossoms to parallel the love story of Hal and his young boyfriend Andy (a shockingly plain Goran Visnjic in a pageboy haircut).

The first frame of “Beginners” features a white flower in full bloom followed closely by the grim imagery of death: Oliver cleaning out his father’s house in the Hollywood Hills, dragging garbage bags to the curb, and flushing his dad’s cancer meds down the drain.  There’s a love of whimsy and unpredictability in Mills’ “Beginners,” as well as in his 2005 adaptation of Walter Kirn’s coming-of-age story, “Thumbsucker.” Mills is probably better known, however, as Mister Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know” and the oddball short story collection, “No One Belongs Here More Than You”).  Director of “The Future,” July shares Mills’ love of social weirdness, and since we’re getting Freudian, Oliver’s mother sports a curly haircut uncannily similar to the real-life July’s.   

From the outset of “Beginners,” Hal’s Jack Russell is so preternaturally smart that he speaks in subtitles, a clever but gimmicky touch that kept the audience members around me giggling to no end.  Giving Arthur a tour of his apartment, Oliver sits him down, man-to-man, and tells him: “Look, it’s lonely out here, so you better learn how to talk with me.”  An alert-looking Arthur stares back, his subtitle reading: “While I understand up to 150 words – I don’t talk.”  What the bittersweet “Beginners” explores is that desire to talk, and to be heard, which seemingly spans age groups, generations, even species. 

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