Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Getty Images)

The Emmys, television's slightly-less-glitzy answer to the Oscars, are this Sunday, and we have some relatively uneducated guesses as to which of the nominees will bring home an oddly spiky statuette.

Best Actress in a Comedy nominees

Zooey Deschanel, New Girl

Lena Dunham, Girls 

Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie

Tina Fey, 30 Rock

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep

Melissa McCarthy, Mike & Molly

Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation

This overstuffed category--seven nominees!--excluded two of last year's nominees as well as the acclaimed and Golden Globe-winning Laura Dern performance on Enlightened, so each person here has a passionate base of support. Even so, it's not hard to believe that Edie Falco and Tina Fey have already been rewarded amply, and Melissa McCarthy's moment of big-screen fame after Bridesmaids contributed more to her win last year than any great love for Mike & Molly. That leaves four! Zooey Deschanel's New Girl performance seems too controversial to gain broad support here, while Lena Dunham will get her reward elsewhere, in the writing category. Amy Poehler's Parks and Recreation simply doesn't seem as popular among Emmy voters--it failed to get a Best Comedy nomination--and Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won twice, for two different series. They like her any way they can get her, and she'll win for being the star of a buzz-y, popular show.

Best Actor in a Comedy nominees

Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock

Louis C.K., Louie

Don Cheadle, House of Lies

Jon Cryer, Two and a Half Men

Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm

Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory

• 30 Rock
• The Big Bang Theory
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• Louie
• New Girl
• Modern Family

Sorry, guys: Girls skews a little young for this crowd. All of the shows on this list are essentially perma-nominees at this point, but for Louie, which is so well-regarded among the establishment that its nomination seems likely, and New Girl, which is youngish but is sort-of, kind-of an actual hit on broadcast TV (unlike possible nominees like Parks and Recreation).

Best Drama

• Breaking Bad
• Downton Abbey
• Game of Thrones
• The Good Wife
• Homeland
• Mad Men

The Good Wife sneaks in just so broadcast TV is represented somehow; the rest are the five TV shows (yes, Downton is a series now, not a miniseries) that combined critical acclaim with your co-workers asking if you were caught up yet. (Poor, not-quite-loved Boardwalk Empire.)

Best Actress, Comedy

• Laura Dern, Enlightened
• Zooey Deschanel, New Girl
• Lena Dunham, Girls
• Tina Fey, 30 Rock
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
• Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation

We stand by our prediction!

Best Actor, Comedy

• Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
• Louis C.K., Louie
• Jon Cryer, Two and a Half Men
• Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm
• Johnny Galecki, The Big Bang Theory
• Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory

Now that perpetual bridesmaid Steve Carell is no longer on TV, there's a spot open, and perhaps it'll go to the guy who helped keep Two and a Half Men on the air, if in attenuated form. Mr. Cryer's already won an Emmy as a supporting actor, anyhow.

Best Actress, Drama

• Claire Danes, Homeland
• Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
• Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife
• Elizabeth McGovern, Downton Abbey
• Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men
• Jessica Paré, Mad Men

Lots of turnover in this category! But presumably Ms. Hargitay will remain, constant, impassive, immovable.
Best Actor, Drama

• Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
• Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
• Kelsey Grammer, Boss
• Hugh Laurie, House
• Damian Lewis, Homeland
• Jon Hamm, Mad Men

With the exception of Hugh Laurie (whose show just ended), this is a party of all the ill-behaved men of cable TV.

Lena Dunham (Getty Images)

The Emmy nominations will be announced July 19, and we're already wondering who will end up nominated; in particular, the question of New York media darling Lena Dunham weighs upon us. Ms. Dunham, creator of HBO's Girls, could get anywhere between zero and four nominations  as creator, writer, director, and star of the show (she could get even more if multiple episodes are nominated for their directing and writing, which seems like a long shot). But is her acting Emmyish enough to stand up to a crowded category? Here are the six actresses whom we think will land in the winners' circle:

Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation: Ms. Poehler's little-watched NBC sitcom inspires slavish devotion among its fans, and Ms. Poehler is the most important element of a talented ensemble. She's like Ms. Dunham, but more establishment.

Tina Fey, 30 Rock: She's the creator, writer, and star of an aggressively outré comedy--that's been honored consistently through its now six-season run. She's like Ms. Dunham, but way more venerable.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep: She's the center of a well-regarded and often profane HBO comedy--and the past recipient of two Emmys, for Seinfeld and The New Adventures of Old Christine. She's like Ms. Dunham with a better pedigree.

Laura Dern, Enlightened: Though not widely-watched, Ms. Dern's Enlightened pushed the boundaries even of what HBO was capable of doing with the medium; her show was tragic and comic at once, and her performance transcended embarrassment to a sort of empathetic brilliance. She's like Ms. Dunham, but middle-aged-people hip and not young-people hip.

Zooey Deschanel, New Girl: The show set off a firestorm of criticism in the media for Ms. Deschanel's persona before it even aired--the question of "how should a girl on TV be?" was weirdly central to the discourse around this pretty unassuming actress. She's like Ms. Dunham, but somehow a little less controversial? (Everyone seems to have gotten over it.)

Lena Dunham, Girls. Given how central Ms. Dunham has been to the discourse of the latter half of the TV season, we have to assume she'll get in here. Or maybe we're just overthinking it!

Zooey Deschanel and Loretta Lynn announcing the 'Coal Miner's Daughter' musical (Getty Images)

In a triple-whammy of trends on Broadway over the past decade or so, Zooey Deschanel (celebrity stunt casting) is to star in Coal Miner's Daughter (an adaptation of a movie), about the life and music of Loretta Lynn (jukebox musical). Somehow she will squeeze this in around her role on New Girl, which films on the West Coast--likely during that series's hiatus next summer. Ms. Deschanel is a folk-adjacent singer with her band She & Him, though country will be a new genre (she sang with Ms. Lynn at the announcement of the musical at the Grand Ole Opry, so we can presume she has the icon's endorsement). Give her a Tony now!

Fox Hole: Want to know why somebody wouldn't become the Fox Mole? Via Mediaite, here you go. Then again, this is the same site for whom a former editor was sent off with a video starring none other than Glenn Beck. In the likely event you didn't make it to the end of that "confessional": "Editor’s Note: Andrew Kirell will begin as a full time editor at Mediaite on April 25." Confidential to Joe Muto: That's where you go after Fox News!

For Your Consideration? The Daily is running a campaign for a Webby Award, and they're using their mailing lists to do it. We'll spare you the text, but the amusingly twee illustration looks like this:

Now you know

(A) What readers of The Daily look like.
(B) That The Webbys have a 'Tablet' category.
(C) That people—or people running companies—actually care about Webbys.
(D) That The Daily—a product that is fundamentally, arrogantly insistent on not having any sort of substantial web presence by design—can be nominated for a Webby. Which serves well to illustrate the extent to which one should care about The Webbys.

Media Power Mazel Tovs: Also from inside The Daily, we hear Media Power Couple (Class of '11) Mike Nizza and Claire Howorth are engaged! Matrimony fever appears to be spreading: Another Media Power Couple (Class of '11) from The Daily—their Fearless Leader/Murdoch Dream-to-Reality Manifester Jesse Angelo and Rebecca Dana of The Daily Beast are also, we hear, now engaged and set to marry in the coming months. Boy, to be a fly on a caterer's tray at that wedding. Also, we had something about destination weddings being the norm here vis-a-vis the whole "you can only read it on an iPad" mandate but it didn't make it through the subway ride this morning.

Media Power Apparel: T-Shirts are the new Tote Bags! Just ask ProPublica, who are now selling them with the tagline "JOURNALISM WITH MORAL FORCE" emblazoned on the front. Can't say we didn't predict this trend, because we did.

Adios, Nomigos: Here's a not-at-all-fond adieu to the absurdity that are entitled commenters, who Gawker Media killed en masse at 6AM yesterday morning. Somehow, the simple point of "THEY ARE COMMENTERS" escapes most high-falutin' discussions about their nature. To briefly editorialize, it is this writer's opinion that comment sections should be treated like cow dung: disregarded and overlooked as a rule, except when in search of psychoactive fungi growth. This is the first time comments have been offline on all Gawker posts since September of 2005, when they first introduced them. Silence is golden.

Tale of the Steak: Except when it isn't. Here's a hilarious comment about Mark Bittman left on our post about a famous New York Times commenter:

When do you do a piece on how Bittman used to steal steaks from the Stop & Shop in New Haven and boast about it in the newsroom of the New Haven Register?

When people mourn the olden days of journalism and dread the future, it should be noted that stories like these are actually what's at—ahem—steak, here.

Selective Restructurings are the New Layoffs: Out Magazine lays off their entire staff just as Aaron Hicklin decides to open up a consulting shop and pick a few people up on contracts for their first client, Out Magazine. This means that they won't have to pay benefits and salaries and certain taxes that come with having an actual payroll, while cleaning house as well, and dispensing cash-flow responsibilities to staffers (or "contractors," as they are now) which is pretty crafty. Interesting? Yes, because according to Paula Froelich's Twitter, happenings at Punch Magazine—the iPad project Maer Roshan was handling until he "stepped down" from day-to-day responsibilities and Jim Windolf took his place—sound the same: "Everyone else fired," P-Fro noted.

The Zooey Mole: One Zooey Deschanel has offered to be Gawker's Zooey Deschanel mole. This may be someone's high-water mark.

Confidence People: People trust journalists way less today than they did when Watergate broke. People who question and/or are surprised by this assertion or why it is are like climate change "opponents" in that it is stunning they actually exist.

All Bourbons Are Whiskey, But Not All Whiskeys Are Bourbon: Slate wants to know if The Huffington Post is a newspaper because it won a Pulitzer. We've got nothing for that one. By the way, people who are surprised a website can win a Pulitzer would be well advised to note that the NoLa Times-Picayune won one in 2006 for their news blog's post-Katrina coverage (via Romenesko).

Brief Housekeeping Note: The Observer's media "desk," Kat Stoeffel, is out for the week on what may be the single most-deserved vacation from this newspaper since Peter Kaplan left. With apologies to her, this writer will be taking her place for the next seven days. Please send any tips, gossip, or malice-lacking-and-well-outside-the-legal-definition-of-slanderous journalism id to fkamer@observer.com.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Ms. Maclaine will be playing the proud American mom to ex-pat Lady Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) on season 3. (This visit will not go over well with Dame Maggie Smith's Lady Grantham, we're sure.)
This news was accompanied by rumors that other stateside cameos might be in the works, so we made several educated guesses as to which American actors could hold their own against the upstairs/downstairs scheming of the McGovern household.

Click through to see our choices, and right in your own candidates in the comments!

(With help Andrew Belonsky.)

Genuine class. (Getty Images)

Last night’s Golden Globes—which we covered live!—were notable for yet more star worship than even the perpetually star-worshipping Globes usually get up to, and most of the stars were of a somewhat aging vintage. Awards went to practically anyone who might have been on People’s Most Intriguing People of 1998 list: Steven Spielberg for Tintin over the makers of Rango, Madonna over Mary J. Blige, Meryl Streep over Viola Davis, Jessica Lange over Evan Rachel Wood, Matt LeBlanc over Johnny Galecki, Laura Dern over Zooey Deschanel, George Clooney uber alles. If this show was too self-consciously snarky to be a tribute to so-called “Old Hollywood,” it was at least a tribute to the period about fifteen years ago when the stars were bigger and shined brighter.

Host Ricky Gervais, who spent more time recounting his past comedic triumphs at this awards show than engaging in anything risky or new, joked about Johnny Depp’s career failures—then welcomed Mr. Depp to the stage, giving the show a feel less of a no-holds-barred slugfest that had been advertised and more of the world’s most loving Comedy Central roasts. Of all that could be said about winner/presenter/synecdoche of the evening’s nostalgic feeling Madonna, Mr. Gervais went with a “Like a Virgin” joke. She countered with a joke about her 2003 kiss with Britney Spears. The past, ladies and gentleman! Mr. Gervais saved his meanest material for Kim Kardashian, who’s an easy target for a roomful of movie stars trying to shore up their shrinking claim on cultural currency.

The evening’s big winners stuck close to the theme of navel-gazing, with George Clooney presenting a tribute to Brad Pitt and Brad Pitt presenting a tribute to George Clooney, Madonna citing Fellini and Godard as seminal influences, and Meryl Streep shouting the names of actresses she liked in lieu of a traditional speech. The evening’s big winner, the French film The Artist, gave the game away, dragging the film’s canine star onstage with the rest of the cast in an antic attempt to entertain, to make some statement about “movie magic.”

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes (Getty Images)

Welcome to New York Observer's Golden Globe coverage of the 2012, where you'll be able to read (and participate!) in real time as Drew Grant and Dan D'Addario take bets on which acclaimed actor will be the first to slap that lopsided grin right off Ricky Gervais' face. Let the fun begin!

As if to reward us for buying tickets to Bridesmaids, the networks were suddenly bullish on “girl”-centric comedies—ABC snagged New Girl, CBS bought 2 Broke Girls, NBC bought Whitney, named for and written by the girl who created 2 Broke Girls, and HBO green-lit Girls, which was not only on-trend title-wise, but also came with Bridesmaids producer Judd Apatow’s imprimatur.

These four shows represented the largest female television boom since the end of Sex and the City, which had demonstrated how lucrative female-centric TV could be, but had also proven difficult to replicate. Networks produced shows about women of similar age and temperament—Cashmere Mafia, Lipstick Jungle—but they failed to stick. TBS broadcast re-runs of SatC which were about 15 minutes long after being trimmed of the sex scenes.

Now seven years gone, the series’ influence still looms over the new female-centric shows. AV Club has already portrayed Girls as a recession-era Sex and the City for a younger generation. The first female-centric show on HBO since the departure of Carrie and the gang, focuses on three young women—“Hannah (Lena Dunham), an eternal intern at a publishing house in SoHo and a hopeful writer; Marnie (Allison Williams), a sexy, bitchy, and ambitious assistant at a slick political PR firm whose goal is to practice environmental law; and Jessa (Jemima Kirke), a space cadet with hippie tendencies who wants to be an artist/educator,” as the press release put it—managing their careers, their relationships, and their friendships with one another in trendy Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

On a press tour for 2 Broke Girls, Sex and the City creator Michael Patrick King insisted his new series had “completely different DNA.” This much is true: Sex and the City’s heroines fetishized Magnolia Bakery cupcakes, while 2 Broke Girls’ heroines capitalized on that trend by marking up the prices of the homemade cupcakes they sell to hipster sheep in the Williamsburg diner where they wait tables.

In fact, one of the more surprising trends found in this crop of female-written television is their marked departure from the sort of third-wave Cosmos-and-Manolos sexual empowerment that was the earlier show’s hallmark. Quite the opposite: In the pilot episode of each of the new series, the star’s sexual humiliation is presented as the obstacle that establishes the season’s narrative arc.

The premise of New Girl is that Jess (Zooey Deschanel) has to move in with a bunch of dudes she finds on Craigslist, after coming home her to surprise her boyfriend with an amateur strip tease and finding him banging his own new girl. (As Lucille Ball might put it: “Waaaah!”) 2 Broke Girls’ Max (Kat Dennings) also catches her boyfriend messing around in her bed in Episode 1; kicking him to the curb frees up apartment space for Caroline, the second broke girl. And Whitney foretells a season of rom-com clichés with the lead character’s attempt to “spice things up” with her boyfriend by donning a nurse’s costume for some role-play, a farce which ends with the poor guy in need of emergency care from a real nurse.

And if Tiny Furniture is any indication, sexual humiliation is also a theme of Ms. Dunham’s. In the film, Aura (played Ms. Dunham), smokes a joint with her co-worker before having a regrettable sexual encounter with him in a Dumbo construction site. It’s a much darker scene than the sexual slapstick found in the New Girl and Whitney, but the message is the same: look at what degradation an otherwise competent and confident young woman will endure for the approval (affection and commitment are not even on the table) of an aloof, good-looking guy.

In addressing sexual power dynamics, 2 Broke Girls and New Girl should be credited for their half-hearted attempts at making sexual objects of male characters, though they end up stalled by clichés. Guy candy is identified by ripped abs, and male vanity by an eagerness to be shirtless. As a result, though, both shows miscast key male actors (Max’s boyfriend looks more like a Hollister greeter than a Havemeyer heartthrob) and, worse, ignore the the array of more insidious strains of vanity plaguing contemporary men—sneaker collections, heritage whiskeys, taxonomic knowledge of the D.C. hardcore scene, etc.

But even an imperfect representation of the hipster subculture is new to network sitcoms. Forget the glossy allure of Carrie and the girls; this new crop of shows seems determined to present women “as they really are,” i.e., beautiful but quirky. Whitney Cummings is a former model, but on TV she plays a version of herself who embarrasses her boyfriend by wearing the wrong thing, falling down, and eating a lot.

New Girl stars indie dream girl Zooey Deschanel, but her acting (which, here, is limited to wide-eyed expressions, a Pee Wee Herman voice and frequently breaking into song) is not “adorkable,” as the show’s marketing campaign insists, but irritating. It actually reminded me of Will Farrell’s demented “Buddy” character in Elf, in which Ms. Deschanel, ironically, played the mordantly adorkable love interest.

2 Broke Girls comes much closer to nailing the hipster aesthetic. It gets the details so wrong you could cringe (a coveted Strokes shirt should have been vintage Pavement, the crowd coming out of an Arcade Fire concert look more like Fleet Foxes fans), but its tone—blithe racism, rapid-fire and scattershot cultural references, real-life conversations about events that occurred on social networks—perfectly captures the defeated irony of the twentysomething gentrifier, for better or for worse.

The best example is a scene in the pilot, in which Max finds Caroline asleep on the train. Max nudges her, and Caroline jolts awake and shocks Max with a pink Taser she had tucked under her arm.

“I thought I was being raped,” Caroline says, by way of apology.

“That’s not what rape feels like,” Max replies, and the laugh track rolls.

The point doesn’t seem to be that rape is funny, but that, despite occupying a safe and gender-equal New York, rape and the threat of rape are still such a horrifically banal part of the female psychological experience that it is the first word on the tip of Caroline’s tongue when she’s touched unexpectedly.

The new slew of girly shows share another somewhat controversial form of humor. With help from Whitney and 2 Broke Girls, the word “vagina” is fall TV’s biggest trend, according to The New York Times’ Bill Carter. It’s not always anatomically precise, but it’s funny.

“Vagina jokes paid for my house,” Ms. Cummings told the Times. As a comedian who inhabits the same sphere of Hollywood stand-ups who spout off dick jokes in Judd Apatow’s Funny People, she knows how to get a surefire laugh.

But dick jokes were enjoyable in Funny People, for one, because they were improvised by a group of male comedians playing male comedians who are also friends.

If vagina jokes are a form of girl bonding, they’re not used that way in these shows. When 2 Broke Girls’s Max tells a male patron of the diner where she works that when he snaps his fingers to get her attention it makes her vagina dry up, it’s just a more crass example of her character’s relentless hostility.

Which gets at why, ultimately, New Girl, Whitney, and 2 Broke Girls feel like they’re missing something—the female characters are so friendless. Female friendship was the constant in Mr. King’s Sex and the City, but 2 Broke Girls’ Max and Caroline are plainly uncomfortable around one another. They avoid eye contact when revealing personal details, as if saving her best lines for themselves. Whitney and her two friends—nameless shopping and drinking partners—fail the Bechdel test (in which two female characters talk about something other than men). New Girl is less about Jess, who mostly cries, than it is about the dynamics between her three male roommates.

But then, if anyone could provide an update on female friendship, I imagine it would be Ms. Dunham. Tiny Furniture took girl talk beyond the brunch table, to conversations in unmade beds, and through the shower door, while wriggling in and out of outfits with a sense of straight girl physical intimacy rarely depicted on screen. In other words, perfect for vagina jokes.

In anticipation of the show, I’ve been following the writers’ Twitter feeds, where gynecological humor has become an ongoing theme.

“Last summer my gyno said lots of women were coming in worried because ‘they didn’t recognize the sensation of having a vagina in hot weather,’” Ms. Dunham wrote.

“Lena!" a friend replied. "Don’t say 'hot vagina.'" a friend replied.

“If this upsets you,” cautioned Jenni Konner, Girls executive producer, “I’m worried you won’t be able to watch Girls.”

Rudd.

Ever since he broke out in the 1995 Jane Austen-goes-to-the-Valley romp Clueless, earning teen idol status for the somewhat questionable act of kissing his underage onscreen step-sister, Paul Rudd has carved out a niche for himself in Hollywood as the go-to hapless everyman. Most of his roles fall into two categories: the hapless, disarming romantic lead (I Love You, Man, How Do You Know), and the hapless, hammy sidekick (Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Wet Hot American Summer). But in Our Idiot Brother, a warm and witty comedy from brother-sister team Jesse and Evgenia Peretz, Mr. Rudd has found a perfect role that showcases his considerable charm and comic talent without robbing him of his hap.

This is not to say that Ned, the titular “idiot brother,” isn’t occasionally very unlucky. A laid-back biodynamic farmer fond of Crocs and Fair Isle sweaters, Ned finds himself in jail after naïvely selling pot to a uniformed police officer, only to return home a few months later to find that his girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn, sporting a head full of dreadlocks and an air of delightful, deluded self-righteousness) has taken a new lover/farmhand and wants him gone. Robbed of his paycheck, his dignity and his beloved golden retriever, Willie Nelson, Ned moves back in with his mother (Shirley Knight), but soon prevails upon his three Manhattanite sisters to put him up while he figures out his next step. One by one, he unwittingly ruins their lives with his granola-crunchy goodwill.

The oldest sister, Liz (Emily Mortimer), is a mousy, insecure, stay-at-home mom married to pompous documentary filmmaker Dylan (Steve Coogan, in a role that seems to be a send-up of first-time screenwriter—and real life documentarian—David Schisgall). Dylan reluctantly agrees to give Ned a low-paying production assistant job in exchange for free childcare, but neither works out well. To Liz and Dylan’s horror, Ned allows their son, River, to watch The Pink Panther after bedtime and teaches him mixed martial arts after noticing how badly River wants to join a karate class instead of the all-girls modern dance class his parents have enrolled him in. And at work, Ned walks in on Dylan in flagrante with his prima ballerina subject (ever the innocent, Ned buys Dylan’s excuse that nakedness encourages uninhibited interviews).

When Liz and Dylan send him packing, Ned takes up residence on the couch of middle sister Miranda (Elizabeth Banks, playing a variation of her ruthlessly ambitious, utterly narcissistic 30 Rock character), a neurotic Vanity Fair staffer—just like co-writer Evgenia Peretz!—on the verge of her big break: a feature interview with an heiress fresh out of a scandalous relationship that’s been the toast of the tabloids. But Miranda doesn’t have the grace or guts to ask tough questions, coming away with a puff piece about the socialite’s pet charity. It’s only the gregarious Ned who’s able to unwittingly coax the real story out of the buttoned-up, P.R.-wary subject, and Miranda wastes no time in attempting to exploit her brother’s knowledge for professional gain. But Ned’s good intentions get in the way of his sister’s agenda—in addition to sabotaging her article, he meddles in Miranda’s personal life, trying to make sparks fly with her next-door neighbor and best friend, Jeremy (Adam Scott)—and soon he’s pounding the pavement once again.

The final, youngest sister, Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), is a struggling stand-up comedian in a loving lesbian relationship with a woman named Cindy (Rashida Jones, forced for some reason by the costume designer to dress like Peewee Herman) who maintains a dangerous flirtation with a male artist friend (Hugh Dancy). When Natalie makes an impetuous mistake with life-altering ramifications, Ned is there to support her—until he accidentally spills the beans to Cindy. Now all three sisters aren’t speaking to him, he still misses Willie Nelson, and he’s back in jail thanks to an ill-advised heart-to-heart with his parole office (turns out you’re not supposed to tell them when you get high with the kid across the street).

With his Jesus beard, earnest eco-friendliness and childlike naïveté, Ned is unquestionably a stereotype (think The Big Lebowski’s The Dude merged with Tom Hanks in Big), and in the hands of any other actor, his hippie-dippy, laissez-faire follies might become unbearable after the first 30 minutes. But Mr. Rudd imbues Ned with an easy, charming sweetness and unpatronizing wisdom that make him seem simply guileless, not stupid. Indeed, the greatest flaw of Our Idiot Brother is in making Ned too saintly—despite the title, it’s clearly the sisters who are the morons. Petty, vapid and criminally self-absorbed, they blame Ned for being the only person to identify the problems keeping them from being happy … until they realize, in a neat, somewhat lazy wrap-up that qualifies, in Oprah-speak, as an “aha moment,” that by ruining their lives, Ned actually has fixed them. Oh, well. It is to the credit of the filmmakers that they manage to recoup and give the movie an ending that’s as winning and winsome as its star.

Our Idiot Brother may not be perfect, but, Crocs and all, Paul Rudd’s performance is idiot-proof.

ulamarche@observer.com

Running time 90 minutes

Written by Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall

Directed by Jesse Peretz

Starring Paul Rudd, Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks, Emily Mortimer

3/4