I guess I’m not alone. Can you imagine dealing with the horrors of the world without humor? It would make day to day living impossible without falling into despair. Andre Ricciardi Is An Idiot, but like we all are, asking all the questions we should have asked before it was too late for us, laughing at how little we may or may not know along the way.
Andre himself suggested the title. Instead of getting a colonoscopy at the normal age, he waited until he jokingly got a couples colonoscopy past 50, meaning doctors never looked for his colon cancer until it was already stage 4. Most of us would cope with urgency and seriousness, taking care of our loved ones and contemplating the meaning of life. Andre contemplates the meaning of life…and the best possible joke about ass x-rays with his business partner Lee Einhorn, his wife Janice, and his two daughters Delilah and Tallula and anyone else. Literally anyone, as he brings a documentary crew with him basically up to his last days on Earth.
Andre Is An Idiot is mostly a lovely argument for why laughter is the best medicine. Andre approaches this whole traumatic experience with a middle finger, ready to turn those frowns upside…downs, sorry. Any initial trepidation his loved ones would have about being worried or scared with him go away immediately, as Andre early and often disarms them with some macabre joke he’s clearly been working on for a while now. Heck, the one time Andre tries to hug his daughters they respond with “Ewww, we don’t do that” and that’s that. I realized long ago that this strips the scary things of their power from you, allowing your mind time to catch up to the reality of the situation and reset accordingly. As time and physical transformations go on, Andre isn’t the Joker. He can’t just laugh at everything till his world burns down; each part of the doc usually finds the place where his mind has caught up and overcome his fears, and he’s found some new poignancy through his joke telling.
Turns out, Andre might actually not be an idiot. He’s off, but in the best ways as we learn about him. His backstory is incredible, especially how he and his wife Janice ended up together. Like all spouses of cancer patients, she comes off downright heroic, the rock and incredible force for the family so he can go off self-discovery documentary making with his pals. Andre’s boldest stroke though is his complete nakedness, in all senses of the word. In doc time we see Andre slowly start to wither away as his body betrays him, while his mind deals with each new hurdle in some strange new thought thread. Andre’s ADHD adjacent thought patterns take us down crazy rabbit holes to help us understand and process his feelings like he does, with pathos but mostly chuckles, like his dealings with a person who can be hired to help someone craft their final words as a living person (yes, that’s real).
As far as cancer comedies go, Andre Is An Idiot is right up there with 50/50. I guess I support the doc version more, since it has the buy in of its subject, and also gives the world the funniest PSA to get a colonoscopy. I won’t be able to look at balloons or oranges the same way again. Andre Is An Idiot…but you don’t have to be.