Sundance.1

My Idiot Brother

I've got a busy week ahead and I can't guarantee daily updates, but here goes Day 1 at Sundance...

Last night we saw 'My Idiot Brother' at Peery's Egyptian Theater in Ogden. (I know, right? Ogden!) The theater itself is pretty cool...it's much bigger and cleaner and maybe newer (?) than the one in Park City, and we were treated to 45 minutes of a live prelude organ performance. There was this little old man sitting down at an organ at the base of the stage, just playing showtunes and love songs until the movie started.

Otherwise...seeing a public screening of a Sundance movie is pretty much like seeing a movie anywhere else. There are no famous people (did I mention we were in Ogden?) and the woman behind you still thinks it's okay to spend 20 minutes unwrapping her granola bar and another 20 trying to figure out where to dispose of the wrapper once she's eaten what was inside it. Pretty much the only perk to these screenings is that you get bragging rights for when the movie is widely released six months or a year from now and you can oh-so-casually mention how you saw it "at Sundance."

THE MOVIE

'My Idiot Brother' stars Paul Rudd as Ned, an easygoing hipster with a heart of gold who finds himself a little down on his luck and who must rely on his three sisters (Emily Mortimer, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel) as he tries to get back on his feet. It becomes quickly apparent that Ned's sisters have significant issues of their own -a cheating husband, a struggling career, and a commitment phobia, respectively- and that, conveniently, all of them are made to confront and deal with their problems over the course of the movie. Strangely, by the end of the film, it doesn't really feel like any of them have grown or changed in any way (as much as the movie would like me to believe otherwise, seeing as how Ned *SPOILER ALERT* got a haircut and all). This could be because none of the characters actually feel like real people or that all of the action in the movie is contrived to specifically make Ned's life as complicated as possible without actually motivating him or causing him to learn anything. I like a twinkle-eyed stoner dude as much as the next fat person, but let's be honest, unfortunate circumstances and funny scenarios do not a character arc make.

The script provides a few good-natured laughs, though not enough to really make up for its overall lack of focus. Every character takes his or her turn at being the butt of the joke; there was no one to really embrace as the moral center or the comedic foil or even the blatantly obnoxious antagonist. It was neither really funny nor totally serious, and while it's enjoyable enough to watch an eternally sunny hippie sail through potential conflicts with lots of smiles and effortless charm, I didn't care enough about him or his family to be amused at their mistakes or heartbroken by their misfortunes.

C+ (not rated yet, but in its current state will be an R when it is released later this year)