OUR IDIOT BROTHER

OUR IDIOT BROTHER (Rated R for profanity, sexually related material, male nudity, brief violence, drug use, drinking, crude humor, & adult thematic elements):  Ned, the brother of three "normal" sisters, is neither a savant nor an illiterate nonsophisticate; he's presented simply as an easy-going fellow who floats from one environment to another, chameleon-like, in a devil-may-care haze, generally ignorant of the trail of problems he leaves behind in the lives of those around him.  Whether he's jailed for selling drugs to an officer in uniform, trying to return to the rural life he once shared with a farm hippy, where he fights to regain his beloved canine Willy Nelson, or crashing disastrously with each of his sisters, Ned always lands on his feet.  He's an adult/child of nature, a sweet & goofy fellow who functions as a person who exposes for our appreciation the hypocrisy & unhappiness of everyone around him.

The movie is an easy-going bit of drollery, written (or profusely improvised: "Y'know what I mean that - wow -y'know, man - like, wow") by Evgenia Peretz & David Schisgall in a series of seemingly unrelated one-to-two-minute SNL-type scenes with no beginning or ending, and delivered by everyone with the bland, flat-voiced technique that represents the contemporary device for comedy, with Paul Rudd in the lead - bearded, slovenly attired, relaxed to the point of ennui in both mannerisms & speech.  We don't know anything about his seeming idiocy, but he handles it with the consistent know-how of a person so dim-witted he's never aware of his deficiencies.  He would be unbearable, and so would the film be, were it not for his total involvement in the role.

Jesse Peretz (the writer's brother) also knows precisely what she wants from her entire cast, and with almost total immersion, gets from her characters a consistently droll, seemingly unpolished, unfinished - even amateurish - result, complete with tiresome hesitancies accompanied by slow-motion reactions to each episode.  Because it's so pervasively consistent, it must be intentionally her intent to build so laid-back an aura over the entire film.

The point, it seems, is to bounce the posturing & empty ambitions of the characters off Ned's mellow way of living.  If you can buy that, and if you can vibrate to the mostly emotion-drained world built by writers & director, you'll find this a witty 90-minutes of fun.  If not and if the liberal peppering of profanity eventually gets to you - well, maybe the obviously faked out-takes might help to amusingly wrap it up.  (Grade:  C+)