Our Idiot Brother (2011)
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Our Idiot Brother Movie Review
Our Idiot Brother is a 2011 comedy film directed by Jesse Peretz and starring Paul Rudd and Elizabeth Banks among many others. It’s a messy, but fun movie.
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“I like to think that if you put your trust out there;
if you really give people the benefit of the doubt,
see their best intentions, people will rise to the occasion“
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Paul Rudd plays a naïve idealist who just wants to be happy and have a good time. He is left in the care of his sisters, who are all terrible bitches, so of course he ends up teaching them a lesson in the process. That ending was obviously immensely predictable, but it still worked as by that point I got so annoyed by these sisters that I was happy for them to finally get some sense.
The acting in this movie is so good, which comes as a disappointment given that they got this terrific ensemble cast, but did not give them great characters to play. They are fine, but still they needed more development and properly defined personalities. Paul Rudd is the best of the bunch. He could be too dumb at times, but still his kind-hearted personality made him so lovable and the movie has a great message given through this chill dude.
The sisters all get their own subplots, but the movie is so overplotted to the point that none of them got enough screen time that was necessary to pull off all these individual stories. Emily Mortimer is fine, but her cheating husband was too obnoxious to me. Zooey Deschanel was lively and interesting in her sexually confused exploits, but still this story needed more room to breathe.
Elizabeth Banks got the most to do and she was very good at it, but seeing her with black hair and being such a cunt was uncharacteristic for her and odd, but she did pull it off. As for Kathryn Hahn, she is by far the most unlikable character of the bunch, but at least he got back his dog in a great subplot that wonderfully showcased the importance of dogs and for them to be with the people who love them the most.
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Our Idiot Brother can be quite funny at times and the acting is terrific. The movie is breezy and a good time to be had, but the contrived nature of the plot, especially the protagonists’ two arrests made it difficult to swallow what is going on. Also, the movie was weakly written and directed, which was a major hurdle that it never overcame.
