Our Idiot Brother (4/5 Stars)

Good writing and nice people: A typical Paul Rudd comedy

The majority of comedies are about mean and obnoxious people. The idea being that gleeful and aggressive shocks of violence and rude behavior elicit laughs. And they do. Quite a lot of these movies are very funny. But every once in a while it is a pleasure to see a comedy take the opposite route and have the running joke be that the characters are too trusting, lovable, and sweet. Or in Ned’s case (played by the funniest nice guy in movies, Paul Rudd) all those characteristics to an idiotic degree.

What a good and compassionate heart Ned has. In the first scene we see him happily running a biodynamic vegetable stall at the local farmer’s market. He charges fair prices and lets little kids steal strawberries with a smile. A uniformed cop walks up to him and asks for marijuana. Ned is hesitant. The cop confides in Ned that it’s been a really rough week for him. Ned, ever so trusting and empathetic, decides to give him a bag of marijuana on the house. No, the cop insists, he wants to pay for it. Ned relents and gives a price that must be a rather large discount for that amount of marijuana. The cop pays and informs Ned that he is being arrested for selling drugs. It takes Ned awhile to realize that the nice cop had been lying to him all along.

Ned is thrown in prison for eight months and is released four months early for being “Most Cooperative Inmate” three months straight. Outside he finds that he has lost his job, his girlfriend, his place to live, and his much loved dog, Willie Nelson. The way he handles all this would make Socrates, Thoreau, and Jeffrey Lebowski very proud. He even makes dudely peace with his girlfriend’s new boyfriend, played here by the very funny T.J. Miller. He drops by his mother’s house where there are still family dinners routinely held. Around the table are his three sisters. One is Emily Mortimer, a wife and mother to an oily Steve Coogan and ten-year-old Dillon respectively. Another is Elizabeth Banks, a hard-working journalist on the verge of a career-making story. Finally there is Zooey Deschanel, a stand-up comedian currently engaged to Rashida Jones, a hipster lawyer with a must-mention sense of style. This is a very good cast. Most of them have worked together before and it has a way of showing. Elizabeth Banks was Rudd’s opposite in “Role Models” and Rashida Jones was Rudd’s opposite in “I Love You, Man.” Those movies too were very nice and funny comedies about good people. You can put this one up there with them. Good writing and nice people. I think it can be said that Paul Rudd is developing a solid reputation for these types of movies.

From there on, Ned couch surfs from home to home causing problems with his honesty and humility. Generally speaking, the problem already exists but Ned has a way of bringing them out in the open because of how his compassion and empathy (which makes him very easy to confide in) combines with his complete inability to tell a lie and childlike belief that the truth brings out the best in people. People tell him things he shouldn’t hear and he shares things to others he isn’t supposed to tell. Soon Emily’s marriage to Steve Coogan is on the rocks (as it should be because the guy is no good), Elizabeth’s career is put in danger (as it should be because her employers are telling her to do shady things), and Zooey’s relationship with Rashida is endangered (as it should be because Zooey has a bad habit of infidelity). All of this happens because of “our idiot brother.”

The first half of the movie is enjoyable but there were very few laughs. The movie did pick up steam, however, as it went along and by the end the laughs were big and numerous. The characters in general are so likable that laughing becomes a very easy reaction to indulge in. I especially liked the raid on the organic farm by Ned and Rashida Jones to steal back Willie Nelson. It goes bad almost immediately and they don’t get the dog back, but T.J. Miller is a really cool dude about the midnight trespassing and all. He even goes so far as to sort of apologize for not giving Ned the right information for when him and the girlfriend would be out of town to see a Dixie Chicks concert. “Next Thursday” apparently in Miller’s mind means every Thursday down the road that isn’t “this Thursday.” Ned kindly informs him that for future reference he should say “Next Next Thursday” if he means the Thursday after next. Sorry Dude, my bad. That’s totally okay, Dude, sorry for the trespassing. The movie did miss an opportunity in its underutilization of Zooey Deschanel though. This is an actress I have seen being truly hilarious before (The Good Girl, (500) Days of Summer). In this movie she plays a stand-up comedian. It would have been funny if she had a decent act that made people laugh or something.

Is Ned truly an idiot? The sisters treat Ned with that special kind of passive aggressive disdain women reserve for honest and humble men. Ned isn’t really an adult in their eyes. Ned tolerates this not only because he has to in that he is sleeping on their couches but also because he loves his family and understands their various problems. There is a very telling scene where Ned finally gets angry. Here is a man who was unjustly sent to prison via an act of compassion, lost his job, his home, his girlfriend, and essentially the respect and dignity in the eyes of his family. Does this make him bitter? No, he is still a good person, tries to do better, and spends much of the movie apologizing to those who are unfairly pissed off at him. What does he get angry about? He gets angry when on family night his sisters essentially ruin a game of charades. They break the rules, won’t have fun, and treat the concept of a family game as a stupid waste of time. It is easy to roll one’s eyes and claim that this is an idiotic thing to get angry about. Or one could perhaps reflect on their priorities in life.

One more thing, and I say this with but the expertise of a person who has seen an almost ridiculous amount of movies. Movies do not glamorize drugs, at least not the good ones. I have seen people drink themselves to death (Leaving Las Vegas), I have seen people ruin their lives with heroin (The Wire, Requiem for a Dream, Basketball Diaries), I have seen people make ridiculously bad decisions while on cocaine (Goodfelllas, Casino, Scarface, Boogie Nights, Bad Lieutenant). I have seen drug overdoses aplenty (Pulp Fiction, Traffic, Trainspotting, SLC Punk). Not once have I seen the movie where somebody smoked marijuana, became addicted, overdosed, or routinely went about their self-destruction. I think the worst I have seen was the case in Dave Chappelle’s Half Baked where one of the characters literally smoked himself retarded. True I have seen potheads that are lazy and stupid, but being lazy and stupid is not a crime and here is the point I want to make. We don’t need to be wasting the police’s time and the taxpayer’s money putting people like Ned behind prison bars. It has been argued that marijuana may lead to heavier drugs and more criminal behavior. You can say the same about losing your job, your girlfriend, and your home, which has a tendency to happen when someone gets thrown in prison. The problem isn’t being solved. Thank God that in this movie, Ned had a good family to fall back on. I think we must remember that there is a difference between behavior that is morally objectionable and behavior that is criminal. It can definitely be said that it would be better for the smoker or drinker to exercise prudence and refrain from intoxicants. But it must also be understood that indulging in mind-altering substances is a universal thing amongst human beings as a species. Basically every religion on the face of the planet has some kind of drug that they use in their functions or tolerate in society. It is a truth that people in general have rough weeks and look for a chance to escape every now and then. When this is made a crime, there will be a ludicrous amount of people behind bars that otherwise could be functioning productive citizens (ex. the United States of America). Drugs use is a very serious thing and those that are addictive, manipulative, and dangerous should be illegal. Marijuana is not one of those. If you would like to know exactly what it does, please read Michael Pollan’s “The Botany of Desire.” Of course, like anything else, marijuana may be abused. But that is a problem that should be dealt with by a family, a church, a support group, or a community. Using lawyers, courts, prisons, and parole officers to solve such a problem is akin to swatting flies with a baseball bat. You’re bound to cause far more damage than if you did nothing at all. 

(500) Days of Summer (5/5 Stars) July 23, 2009

Boy meets Girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t. Agony and Ecstasy ensue. (500) Days of Summer is the directorial debut of Marc Webb and stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a boy named Tom and Zooey Deschanel as a girl named Summer. It was written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Webber, a team that according to IMDB was also responsible for Pink Panther 2. Go figure. Anyway this time they’ve penned a cinematic gem that should join the short list of great romantic comedies like Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Watch for this movie come awards time because this is just the kind of Original Screenplay the Academy loves giving the Oscar to. 
Tom is introduced to us as a boy who believes in love. Summer confesses at one point that she doesn’t even know what that word means. She doesn’t want to date Tom and says so. That being said, she will sleep with him and indeed starts everything herself one day in the copy room by walking up to him and, without saying a word, kisses him. Poor Tom, he never had a chance. The movie creates some very inventive ways to illustrate how Tom feels about Summer. It employs an omniscient narrator, direct to camera soliloquies, flashbacks and flash-forwards, karaoke, at least one heartfelt resignation speech, and black and white artistic renderings. At one point it ventures into a black and white documentary and we are informed that Summer’s high school yearbook quote was a song lyric that sings, “Colour my life with the chaos of trouble.” Another inspired spectacle occurs when Tom, high on love, walks down the street super happy and the entirety of Los Angeles breaks into song and dance all around him to the tune of “You Make My Dreams,” by Hall & Oates. When Tom feels the agony of bona fide rejection the movie feels it too, the entire screen morphing into a black and white etching and deconstructing before our eyes. 
But what really makes this movie special is the details. The attention paid to the specifics draws the movie into pure cinematic poetry in some scenes, like when Tom and Summer play house in an Ikea, or when Tom draws the LA skyline on Summer’s arm, or when the movie splits the screen showing what Tom’s expectations of a rooftop party would be on one side, and what the reality is on the other. I especially loved the work that went into the Greeting Cards that Tom works on. (I haven’t mentioned that yet. Tom works at a Greeting Card company. Summer is the new assistant at the office.) Some of them are pretty damn good like, “Everyday I am proud of you, but today you get a card.” Or “I Love Us.” Or how about the first scene in which they talk to each other. They are both standing in the elevator when Summer hears ‘The Smiths’ through Tom’s headphones. She breaks the ice by saying she like ‘The Smiths,’ compliments his taste in music, and sings offhand one of their lyrics. The lyric they chose for her to sing in this tiny little moment was so perfect and profound that my reaction to it was the same as Tom’s: “Holy Shit.” 
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been quietly pulling together a very impressive track record of small independent movies. Here, he should formally carry on the torch of Heath Ledger as the most promising young actor in the business. Zooey Deschanel matches him in every scene. She infuses her character with this innocent confidence that is both terribly cute and infuriating. One can completely see why Tom, when asked whether he would rather marry, boff, or kill her, says he’d like to do all three. I especially liked it when he surmised that she might be an evil robot. Boy that takes me back. Could these two get nominations? I don’t know, but I will say this, I am starting to warm to the idea of the Best Picture category holding ten nominees instead of five. This type of movie wouldn’t have made it in the past, but with the extra room it should be able to get in handily. It is certainly one of the best movies I have seen this year. It’s the best romantic comedy I have seen since ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall.’
Did I mention that this movie was funny? Well it is. It’s not all love and misery you know; it’s got wit, warmth, quick one-liners, a fight, comic vignettes, keen juxtaposition, and clever coincidences. Heck what more can I say. This movie has it all. I really hope it comes to a theater near you soon.