Our Idiot Brother

Ned Rochlin (Paul Rudd) is a hippie body and soul. He always believes in the good in people and always meets his environment with kindness and a disarming portion of naivety. However, this always gets him into trouble and when he sells a portion of weed to a policeman, of all people, Ned ends up in jail without further ado. As if that wasn't enough, after his release his girlfriend Janet (Kathryn Hahn) throws him out the door and refuses to let him keep his beloved dog. Ned's sisters Liz (Emily Mortimer), Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) and Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) feel sorry for their brother, but don't really take his problems seriously and can't resist a joke or two at Ned's expense. But they soon stop laughing when Ned moves in with them and turns the daily lives of his three sisters upside down. And so it doesn't take long until it comes to a solid fight between the siblings, for which a culprit is quickly found....

Our Idiot Brother is a nice family comedy, which has some very amusing moments, lots of charm and a very good ensemble of actors. Paul Rudd (How Do You Know It's Love) is perfectly cast as the slightly dorky but extremely good-hearted Ned. Even if his naivety seems a bit unworldly and over the top in some moments, and he runs the risk of getting on the audience's nerves a bit as a result, in the end you can't help but kind of like him. Even when he causes his little nephew to suffer considerable bruises, causes one sister to have a full-blown marital crisis and endangers the other's relationship, Ned never actually means any harm. On the contrary, he simply speaks out about what the others would like to turn a blind eye to, confronting them with their own mendacity and forcing them to face the consequences for their mistakes. This is uncomfortable and also makes you angry, but in the end it's actually quite a big help.

Besides Paul Rudd, New Girl Zooey Deschanel as the somewhat sexually confused Natalie, Kathryn Hahn as the ice-cold eco-witch and the great Steve Coogan as the self-absorbed documentary filmmaker who likes to film particularly intimate moments naked - for purely artistic reasons, of course. The actors harmonize well with each other, especially the family structure is quite believable. It is this good interplay from which the film ultimately benefits greatly.

Because otherwise the comedy is always in danger of being a kind of nice, but ultimately inconsequential little film to splash along and immediately after the credits to disappear again from the memory of its viewers. If it wasn't for the good actors, this fate would have been guaranteed for the movie. Our Idiot Brother is far from being a bad movie. Director Jesse Peretz tells what is in itself a very nice story spiced up with enough amusing moments to keep at least those viewers who like American independent comedies of the lighter variety well entertained. But the production lacks the last kick, the gags the decisive ignition to be just more than just nice entertainment.

So the story about the idiot brother with his penchant for lovable naivety always remains charming, relatively amusing and entertaining. Whether that justifies a visit to the cinema is an open question. But at the latest on DVD this film is then nevertheless: quite worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp