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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 31, 2011)
arts & entertainment Film review: ‘Our Idiot Brother’ Terminally-Naïve Hippie Wreaks Havoc in Prodigal Sibling Comedy N ed (Paul Rudd) is a good-natured organ- ic farmer who was dumb enough to be duped into selling pot to a uni- formed police officer (Bob Stephenson). Not long past the opening credits we find him just being paroled, hav- ing paid his debt to society by serving a long stretch behind bars. However, when he hitch- hikes home to surprise his girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn) after being released from prison a few months early for good behavior, he’s shocked to find out she’s already shacking up with another hippie (T.J. Miller). What’s worse, she won’t even let him stay in the goat barn while he tries to get back on his feet. So, broke and unem- ployed, Ned appeals top his mom (Shirley Knight) who enlists the assistance of his relatively-successful sisters, Liz (Emily Mortimer), M ovIE r EvIEW by Kam Williams Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) and Natalie (Zoe Deschanel). They grudging- ly agree to take turns letting the proverbial black sheep of the family crash on their couches, despite the fact that he has never held a steady job. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for Ned to wear out his welcome at each port-of-call, when the same gullibility which initially makes him so endearing ends up destabilizing his siblings’ assorted relation- ships. For instance, he is forced to bid mother-of-two Liza adieu soon after mat- ter-of-factly mentioning that ‘Our Idiot Brother’ Good (2 stars) Rated R for nudity, sexuality and pervasive profanity. Running time: 90 minutes Studio: The Weinstein Company Page 8 The Portland Skanner august 31, 2011 he caught her film director husband (Steve Coogan) cavorting naked with his latest leading lady (Lori E. Cunningham). He next manages to make as much of a mess of com- mitment-shy Natalie’s life by nonchalantly informing her lesbian lover (Rashida Jones) that his sister is now pregnant after having a het- ero one-night stand. And that same blasé attitude comes into play when he inadvertently interferes with a platonic friendship of Miranda’s as well as with her latest interview assign- ment for Vanity Fair. Directed by Jesse Peretz, the decidedly droll Our Idiot Brother will work for you to the degree that you are able to suspend disbelief and swallow Ned’s terminal naïvete as he unwittingly wreaks havoc everywhere he goes. Credit Paul Rudd for portraying the character with an utterly convincing innocence, even if that ded- icated effort is regrettably oft undermined by the script’s repeated reliance on repugnant misogynistic and mean-spirited flourishes. A well-intentioned idealist clueless enough to make Forest Gump look street- wise. Book review: Push Has Come to shove — getting Our kids the Education They Deserve (Even If It Means Picking a Fight) by Dr. steve Perry By kam Williams Special to The Skanner News “I’m often referred to as a ‘tough love’ principal… The day I declared that I wanted to start a school was the day that the fighting began… Push has definitely come to shove… I opened Capital Prep because I know that America has failed to devel- op a successful public school system that can be replicated across racial and class lines… Children deserve better and we can give it to them… This book introduces you to the challenges we encountered and how we beat them to become one of America’s most successful schools.” — Excerpted Introduction Y from the ou don’t need me to recite the statistics for you. By now, everybody knows that the public school system is fail- ing America’s kids. Even those who earn a diploma are generally getting an inferior education in com- parison to their private school counterparts and to children in most developed nations, especially places like Finland and South Korea. The situation is the most alarming in the inner cities where the graduate rates are so low that lots of schools are now routinely referred to as dropout factories. This is not the case, however, with Capital Prep, a magnet school located in Hartford, Connecticut. The institution was found- ed in 2005 by Dr. Steve Perry, a proponent of tough love reminiscent of the leg- endary Joe Clark of “Lean on Me” fame. Although he doesn’t roam the halls with a baseball bat, Dr. Perry is just as demanding of his pupils, and he also has very high expectations of his teachers as well. And his tireless efforts have yielded some astound- ing academic results, name- ly, a 100 percent graduation rate in a district with a 29 percent average. Furthermore, he sends all of his kids on to college, a rare feat indeed for any public school. In “Push Has Come to Shove,” Perry, a frequent CNN contributor, shares his formula for success in the hope that it might be embraced and replicated all across the nation. But be forewarned, his controver- sial approach envisions the implementation of signifi- cant changes which would amount to a drastic overhaul of the entire school system. For, with a glee akin to that of former Washington, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, Dr. Perry advocates an assault on such seemingly sacred cows as top-heavy administrative bureaucracies, tenure for teachers, and the union inclination to protect its bad apples via what he dubs a “leave no teacher behind” philosophy. Luckily, the author only needs to point to the triumphs of his own pro- gram as proof that his inno- vative ideas deserve some serious consideration. Brutally honest in its indictment of the status quo, “Push Has Come to Shove” amounts to an urgent clarion call for change by a relent- lessly-uncompromising iconoclast who undoubtedly has his students’ best inter- ests at heart.
