The best policy

Our Idiot Brother

Crit

Was content to give this a miss, but after Irene spoiled my day at the ballpark tomorrow, and after 2 positively hellish days at work, I decided that dumb hilarity was just the ticket. And it was, though it was less hilarious and more touchingly serious than I had anticipated. Paul Rudd is convincing in a role that takes some convincing, as the title character who is not in fact stupid, just stunningly unguarded and pathologically honest, as if he'd been raised by really, really sweet wolves. The film isn't stupid, either, though it hardly blazes any dramatic or comedic trails. There's one early romantic thread in particular that has you expecting the standard romcom implausibility, but no. Biggest flaw is a rushed resolution, with no more explanation than the intuition that Ned is, after all, stoner Jesus.

Can I also just say: Rashida Jones?

Trailers

• Dirty Girl--This, too, looks like a funny-becomes-serious-and-deep-and-shit effort, lots clunkier than the one I saw today.
• 50/50--A cancer comedy starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in his second feature w/ the numeral 5 in the title, having appeared in two TV series with 3 in the title, plus films w/ 1 and 2 (also lots of zeroes); if you care, look 'em up on IMDb. Bizarrely, the trailer ran twice consecutively; the title refers to the Levitt character's survival chance, so I guess the double play makes him 100%--though I suppose it could be 100% in either direction.
• Tower Heist--OK, I'm not sayin' for sure, but this looks as if it might be a watchable Eddie Murphy film, perhaps in part because he's not the lead. He's the con enlisted by the Madoffed white people to engineer the title event.