There are films that one will watch where you are completely enamored with the concept and will continue to slog through a movie’s underachievement with that concept. This is certainly what I was going through while watching Ideal Home, the recently released film in which Paul Rudd and Steve Coogan play husbands who have a grandchild dropped into their laps by a delinquent father. Though it feels like a movie that will be a fun diversion, Ideal Home is ultimately a kind of boring and really on the nose movie.
Paul (Rudd) and Erasmus (Coogan)are a bickering pair of queens whose marriage issues are amplified by the fact that they work on a television show together in Santa Fe, NM. Erasmus as it’s demanding host routinely overlooks and belittles Paul, who is getting dangerously close to leaving him to go produce Rachel Ray. Their life plans are thrown for a loop when they are visited by Angel/Bill, Erasmus’ grandson, who is seeking asylum after his raggedy father has been arrested again. The two are initially overwhelmed, but come to care for the boy, just in time for the father to want to reclaims custody.
Ideal Home’s concept is pretty standard, even if it’s about gay husbands. However, with Coogan and Rudd in the lead roles, it morphed into something that I became weirdly invested in seeing play out. However, the movie really and truly suffers from not going deeper into the many themes and concepts it presents. Everything in this movie is surface level, which is a shame because it’s not like the movie doesn’t try. But I just found myself so frustrated by the approach of the movie. Steve and Paul play very convincing bickering husbands who still love each other, and I wanted them to dig even deeper. Having a child dropped onto your relationship wreaks havoc, so then how is every issue solved by the next scene? Was that a heartfelt moment? Let’s undercut it with a quip. A funny scene? Let’s cut away from the actor working the best in the scene. Ideal Home just whiffs every time on going even an iota past what will get this movie to its 97 minute run time. There are so many moments the movie could have let its freak flag fly (gays in New Mexico hosting an HGTV like show alone could have been a movie) but Ideal Home does the least with the most.