Our Idiot Brother

            Sometimes you watch a movie on a whim.  Sometimes you watch a movie because it's from your favorite director.  Sometimes you really love the star of the film.

            But sometimes, just sometimes, you check out a movie because you're intensely curious about it.  Sometimes a film looks way outside your preferred genres but something compels you to watch it anyways.  That was the case with me yesterday.

            On to the review!

            I don't much care for feel-good movies.  They're usually too predictable for me to get into the film, and the cast generally doesn't do enough to keep me interested.  This includes most romantic comedies as well as the touchy-feely indie/comedy movie that crops up once or twice a year.  Little Miss Sunshine made me flinch just as much as laugh, and I generally avoid these types of films unless straight-up hands me the DVD and tells me to watch it.

            Fortunately, I've found one of my few exceptions.  I cannot say enough good things about Our Idiot Brother.

            In it, Paul Rudd stars as Ned, a super-positive hippie with absolutely no common sense.  The movie starts off with him selling weed to a uniformed police officer, sending him directly to jail, skipping go, and certainly not collecting $200 let alone the price of the dime bag.

            Once he gets out, he tries to go home to his girlfriend Jan (Kathryn Hahn), but she's moved on.  With little other choice, he starts crashing with family.  First his mother Ilene (Shirley Knight), then his three sisters.

            Each sister, however, has problems of their own.  Oldest sister Liz (Emily Mortimer) is having marital issues with husband Dylan (Steve Coogan), and their son River (Matthew Mindler) is a miserable child.  Sister Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) is a bossy go-getter who only wants to get ahead in her job and the only man in her life is neighbor Jeremy (Adam Scott), who she treats like a manservant more than a friend.  Finally, Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) is a free-spirit who lives with her girlfriend Cindy (Rashida Jones) and doesn't do much in the way of real work.

            Got all that?  Good.  What you'll notice, though, is that this film is absolutely studded with indie darlings and people we tend to root for more often than not.  The cast is quite literally so chock-full of actors and actresses that I like to see that it seemed almost like a ploy.  As if the film was saying "even if it sucks, you're going to watch it because you love these people." 

            Fortunately, it does everything but suck. 

            As Ned bounces around, his pure naivety and honest nature gets him in trouble with one sibling after another.  Of course nothing is actually his fault, but he is the catalyst that gets everyone else in their own personal hot water. 

            It sounds pretty simple laid out like that, but Paul Rudd is so winning in his role, and everyone else seems so perfectly cast to their character type that you can't help but smile the entire damn movie.  Even as things go to shit, you just know, deep down, that they'll get better.  But it's not the plot that is so winning, it's the cast.

            I know I often praise this person or that actress for being great in their role, but it's rare that every single damn person in a film perfectly inhabits their character.

            If you enjoyed Little Miss Sunshine or just like happy ending films, watch Our Idiot Brother, because it is undoubtedly the cream of the crop.