Our Idiot Brother
Weinstein Company, The | Release Date: August 26, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
60
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
22
Mixed:
15
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonAug 25, 2011
Our Idiot Brother is smart entertainment. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumAug 24, 2011
I do wish the movie's ending weren't so squishy. It's been changed from the finale that Sundance audiences saw earlier this year and now reeks of focus-group testing. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'HehirAug 25, 2011
It's a warm, intelligent and highly contemporary comedy with just the right amount of edge, a terrific ensemble cast and a big, fuzzy golden retriever ready to knock you down and lick you like a giant lollipop. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigAug 26, 2011
Watching Rudd bring dimension to what could have been a clownish caricature is the best reason to see this good-natured family comedy. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerAug 26, 2011
Too often ambles into inconsequentiality. And, predictably, Ned becomes a kind of family savior – the idiot becomes the sage. It's Frank Capra for dummies. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle SmithAug 26, 2011
So this bourgeois-bohemian movie is, in a way, as serene in its obliviousness to the exterior world as its man-child subject. It's not essential, but it is endearing. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 25, 2011
Easily could have been mildly funny and phony but instead is really funny and true to life. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaAug 25, 2011
While this hugely likable cast is, indeed, hugely likable, no one's sweating things at all. The comedy's relaxed, moony rhythms imbue it with a certain charm, but can result in a certain stop-and-start awkwardness, too. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 25, 2011
It's sweet, and low-key. It's very '70s in its vibe, which helps when the script veers in and out of formula. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertAug 24, 2011
It's refreshing, this late in the summer, to find a hot weather comedy that doesn't hate its characters and embed them in scatology and sexual impossibilities. Read full review
75
ObserverUna LaMarcheAug 24, 2011
Mr. Rudd imbues Ned with an easy, charming sweetness and unpatronizing wisdom that make him seem simply guileless, not stupid. Indeed, the greatest flaw of Our Idiot Brother is in making Ned too saintly - despite the title, it's clearly the sisters who are the morons. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerAug 22, 2011
Shat makes Our Idiot Brother work is the endless appeal of watching Rudd's lovable idiot run roughshod over the sophisticated New York mini-universe while winning the confidence and admiration of everyone around him. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonAug 25, 2011
Goofily funny, and silly, and in many ways follows the currents of contemporary comedy into the gulf stream of inanity. And yet Ned turns out to be a strangely moving figure, a comic foil worthy of affection, perhaps even respect. Read full review
70
SlateDana StevensAug 25, 2011
This little movie isn't a fully accomplished farce - it veers toward sentimentality - but the fact that Peretz even gestures in the direction of farce is somehow cheering. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottAug 25, 2011
A thin, unconvincing movie made likable by the charm and skill of its cast and by a script peppered with wit and insight. Read full review
70
TimeMary PolsAug 25, 2011
Our Idiot Brother is both daffier and more amiable than a Woody Allen film, but the sibling filmmakers (Jesse Peretz directed and his sister Evgenia Peretz co-wrote the screenplay) have concocted sort of a "Ned and His Sisters." Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyAug 25, 2011
The comedy isn't always as crisp as it should be, but Peretz has the perfect partner in crime in Rudd. Read full review
70
MovielineStephanie ZacharekAug 25, 2011
It's the kind of movie whose value lies between the lines, not directly on them, and if the pleasures it offers are slender ones, at least there's something good-hearted about them. Read full review
70
NPRBob MondelloAug 25, 2011
The rhythms are gentle, the smiles plentiful, the chuckles frequent, with the overall effect about as pleasantly innocuous as the film's hero. Read full review
70
Boxoffice MagazinePam GradyAug 15, 2011
This is Rudd's movie and he once more displays an unerring eye for comedy. He comes at it from an actor's perspective rather than a comedian's and it shows as his character as hilarious as he is credible. Read full review
67
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallAug 24, 2011
Certainly amusing, but it never accelerates past one-note characters playing out separate personal crises in ways that aren't surprising. Read full review
63
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreAug 24, 2011
The unfailing sweetness of Paul Rudd's lead performance makes what could have been another raunchy and rude R-rated farce a bracing change of pace in a summer of aggressive comedies about aggressive people, from "Bad Teachers" to "Horrible Bosses." Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierAug 26, 2011
Despite a pleasantly laid-back demeanor, you wish it would just get focused. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesAug 25, 2011
Like Nicole Holofcener's "Please Give" (2010), this turns on the friction between an unusually altruistic character and the self-centered people around him, though screenwriters David Schisgall and Evgenia Peretz never pursue their premise into the sort of moral comedy that so distinguished the other movie. Read full review
60
Time OutSam AdamsAug 24, 2011
Apart from the disastrously miscast Deschanel's dithering switch-hitter, the film's extended clan of uptight urbanites rings true - though their course-corrections don't. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 24, 2011
The rest of the cast is fine, actually, but Rudd spares nothing in making Ned a lovable loser, with the emphasis on "loser." Read full review
58
Portland OregonianM. E. RussellAug 25, 2011
Our Idiot Brother lives in a sort of relaxed in-between place where it doesn't really bite as drama or comedy, but the movie's world-class cast and big heart push it over. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubNathan RabinAug 24, 2011
Rudd ably carries the film while retaining a light touch, though even with Rudd in the lead, it's still a featherweight trifle, an afternoon nap of a feel-good comedy. Read full review
58
IndieWireEric KohnAug 22, 2011
Hiding behind a shaggy beard and a stoner grin, Paul Rudd plays an amusingly oblivious shlub in Our Idiot Brother, but the movie can't keep up with his comic inspiration. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenSep 1, 2011
Ultimately a shambling tale told with genial grace but little substance. It provides a pleasant buzz while it unfolds but vanishes quickly in a puff of smoke. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenAug 28, 2011
The ensemble is unwieldy and the attendant yarn much too cluttered. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversAug 25, 2011
Our Idiot Brother comes off as a blueprint for a smart script no one really made. Now that's what I call dumb. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 25, 2011
There are times when Our Idiot Brother possesses a loping, genial sweetness. But it lacks conviction, and it doesn't hold a beeswax candle to such similarly themed films as "You Can Count on Me" and "Momma's Man." Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliAug 24, 2011
It's tame and rather bland, and the laughter it generates is half-hearted. Director Jesse Peretz commits the unpardonable sin of wasting the considerable comedic talent of Paul Rudd. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeAug 15, 2011
Shambles along with all the purposefulness of its title character, a kind of near-beer Lebowski who's neither reckless enough to cheer for nor misguided enough to disdain. Read full review
50
VarietyJustin ChangAug 15, 2011
Picture needs every ounce of goodwill it can wring from Rudd's likable lead performance to offset a sour, borderline misogynistic streak for which scattered snickers offer only modest compensation. Read full review
40
Village VoiceKarina LongworthAug 23, 2011
Its roundelay of shallow types (played by beautiful movie stars) treating one another badly, and having whiny conversations about said treatment, is such a whisper-soft version of social critique that it makes the autobiographical films of Nicole Holofcener (Please Give, Friends With Money) look as cutting as the films of Jean Eustache. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisAug 25, 2011
It's all emotionally counterfeit, and that bogusness infects the comedy. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezAug 26, 2011
The talented actors are game, but they are done in by the shallow nature of their characters, none of whom behaves in a manner remotely resembling real life (they don't really seem to be related, either). Read full review
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