We all have the sibling stories of the one brother (or sister) who has a way of just messing up our lives, even though they mean well. But how do you capture that in a movie? Directed Jesse Peretz does…tackling the loving but complicated bond between siblings. Ned (Paul Rudd) is a seemingly earnest organic farmer who is overly honest to a point of destroying his own life. When his selfish-hippy-chick girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn) boots him off their property and won’t allow him to take his Golden Retriever named “Willie Nelson” Ned has no place to go but home.
And so he arrives – not like a tornado, but more like a slow moving storm into his three sisters various lives. Liz (Emily Mortimer) is the dowdy sister married to Dylan (Steve Coogan) a documentary filmmaker whose filming things he maybe shouldn’t be filming. Then there’s Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) a lovable lesbian who harbors her own secret and finally there’s Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) the career sister. Each of them have complicated lives that Ned manages to mishap and manipulate by way of the truth. Perhaps white lies rule?
But the real honesty comes from the film’s message. While Ned is seemingly at the center of all their problems, could it be that he just moves their existing elephants out of the room and into reality? Perhaps Ned – with his genius for enjoying the simple things in life – jumping on trampolines with his nephew – isn’t such an idiot brother afterall. Three tiaras