Our Idiot Brother

The idiocy of the title of Jesse Peretz's clever little film is an ironic guilelessness that sets our hero, Ned, played by the always entertaining Paul Rudd, apart from nearly every other adult human on the planet ... which might explain why animals and children adore him. The story's premise is that Ned -- an eternal flower child and organic farmer -- gets released from prison after doing time for selling pot to a uniformed officer with a sad story (yes, he's that trusting) and bounces from one of his three sisters to the next, invading their dysfunctional space and, oddly and, well, guilelessly uncovering the hollow cores of their lives. It's a clever tale that features some fine acting from Rudd, his trio of sisters played by Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks and Emily Mortimer, and Steve Coogan who plays Ned's repugnant documentarian brother-in-law. A sedate and intelligent hippie's movie that is only tangentially about smoking weed.