Our Idiot Brother

Another buzzed-about-Sundance-fave trap. This is, at most, a likable film with likable actors for about three quarters of its running time before it tries to push its point home in the final lap and becomes pretty bad. As a comedy it's not that funny and as a character study it's not that deep, although this subject matter would have made a good Mike Leigh film, sort of a companion piece to Happy Go Lucky. Paul Rudd, an actor who is getting consistently better, is the dumb, sweet-natured brother to three sisters, one sad, one shrill, one silly, played respectively by Emily Mortimer, Elizabeth Banks (channeling Parker Posey) and Zooey Deschanel. Films like this make me wonder how bad the not-buzzed-about Sundance entries are.