André Is an Idiot: A Cancer Comedy That Earns Its Tears
The title alone makes André Is an Idiot stand out in the Sundance lineup, but Tony Benna's documentary about advertising creative André Ricciardi dying from colon cancer is far more than a colonoscopy PSA. It's a testament to humor as survival mechanism, a portrait of a genuine weirdo, and possibly the most life-affirming film about death you'll ever see.
André opens the film by looking directly into camera and describing a teenage masturbation mishap involving splinters. That's your warning: this isn't going to be a typical cancer documentary. Diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer after avoiding colonoscopies for years (hence the "idiot"), André decided to document his final journey with the same irreverence he brought to his advertising career.
What makes this work isn't just André's relentless humor – though watching him get his eyebrows trimmed because chemo makes them grow wildly, or visiting a "death yells" website to practice primal screams, provides genuine laughs. It's the way Benna captures how comedy becomes both shield and sword against mortality. André's wife Janice and daughters Tallula and Delilah aren't just supporting players; they're co-conspirators in maintaining joy despite devastating circumstances.
The film's visual style, mixing stop-motion animation with documentary footage, reflects André's advertising background while avoiding sentimentality. When André takes mushrooms with his best friend Lee to process his diagnosis, or argues with his therapist about whether his final days should be the funniest, we see a man refusing to let cancer write his story's ending.
At 88 minutes, it's perfectly paced, never overstaying its welcome or wallowing in grief. André wanted to make "a really funny documentary about something really serious," and he succeeded. This won both the Audience Award and the editing prize at Sundance, and deservedly so. It's a film that makes you laugh, cry, and immediately schedule a colonoscopy.