Tag Archives: Elizabeth Banks

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Our Idiot Brother – Review

Score: 2/5 – Paul Rudd’s charm only goes so far

I really like Paul Rudd and wish I could give Our Idiot Brother a higher score. Looking at the cast, which includes Zoey Deschanel, Rashida Jones, TJ Miller, Steve Coogan, Adam Scott and Elizabeth Banks, I would have thought Our Idiot Brother would be a much funnier movie.

In the movie, Paul Rudd plays Ned. Think of the nicest and most innocent guy you know. Ned is that guy times three. Ned spends the majority of the movie bouncing around the NYC apartments of his three sisters after spending a short stint in jail.

The biggest problem with Our Idiot Brother comes from the script, which renders Ned’s sisters unlikable beyond repair. Ned unwittingly helps them expose and realize their personal and professional problems. They’re problems that none of the sisters want to deal with, so they blame Ned. But they come across as generic animated types, not individuals. There’s the Park Slope liberal mom, the Williamsburg lesbian and the uptight corporate bitch. That’s all you need to know about the three of them because that’s all there is to them. There are characters in this movie you aren’t supposed to like. Ned’s sisters aren’t three of them. But they are all made unlikable by the script. Any scene where they appear without Rudd suffers.

There are funny bits in Our Idiot Brother. I loved the very end of the movie. Any time Rudd and TJ Miller were on screen together was great. Basically, any scene with Rudd is better for it. His boyish charm is stretched to the max in this movie.

Our Idiot Brother needed more Miller time.

The DVD has an alternate ending. It’s good they didn’t go with the original ending. Compared to the theatrical release’s ending, it’s both overly long and far less funny, probably because the focus is divided away from Rudd, who carries this movie from beginning to end on his easygoing charm.

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On The Couch 2011 #4: Suburbia

Watching Suburbia, I felt like I really knew these characters. I mean I felt like the characters were based on people I knew growing up in the suburbs of New York City in the mid-90s. The funny part is, if I saw this movie in the mid-90s, I would have seen this movie as extolling the magic of the lives of me and my friends, but watching it today, that’s definitely not the case.

Does a character doing spoken word performance art come across less annoying in the stage production? Because it’s hugely annoying on film. And in real life for that matter, in case any upcoming performance artists are reading this. At the same time, I felt like Sooze, more than any of the other characters, was plucked right from my particular suburb. I really feel like I knew this girl growing up. She was really annoying back then too.

Sooze, there is nothing about you that isn’t annoying.

Suburbia was alright, but not better than that. The best thing I can say about it is that it captured the depressing side of post-high school suburban life really well. I liked growing up in the ‘burbs, but it had its bad days, and Suburbia definitely captures one of them.

Final thought: Parker Posey is the brunette Elizabeth Banks.
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On The Couch #47: Fred Claus

It was a two-fer of Vince Vaughn movies on Saturday. First I caught early Vince Vaughn in Rudy and then I watched some more recent Vince Vaughn in Fred Claus.

What Fred Claus really wants for Christmas is to look once more like he did in Rudy.

When I was taking screenwriting classes, I had the bright idea that the best movie to write from a purely financial standpoint would be a Christmas movie. If it’s any good, it will have good sales year after year on DVD and be syndicated to kingdom come. Write a hit Christmas movie and then sit back and let the royalty checks pour in every December.

The idea I came up with in class was for a movie about Santa’s brother. The guy would be the opposite of Santa in every way possible and would have the goal of ruining Christmas, like the Grinch, but on a worldwide scale. I never got past a paragraph long story idea for it. The makers of Fred Claus did a much better job with the Santa’s brother concept than my paltry idea could ever hope to achieve. It’s a very cute Christmas movie and I really enjoyed watching it.

I think one of Fred Claus’s strengths is that it made Fred a sympathetic character right from the start. Young Nicholas Claus is very similar to Own Wilson in Little Fockers. He means well and is always doing good deeds, but he doesn’t quite get how his actions, altruistic as they may be, hurt those closest to him. In Little Fockers, it was Owen Wilson unintentionally screwing over Ben Stiller. In Fred Claus, it’s young Santa Claus screwing over his big brother Fred.

I’m amazed Mrs. Claus is cool with Elizabeth Banks’s low-cut uniform.

If you’re looking for a good Christmas comedy that you can watch around the kids, you’d do well with Fred Claus.