André Is an Idiot review – a riotously funny, painfully honest film about facing death | Film

There are about a million films – fiction, non-fiction and everything in between – about people dealing with cancer, so kudos to the team behind this one for finding a relatively new way to approach the subject. San Francisco resident Andre Ricciardi – a constantly wry former advertising executive, semi-reformed hedonist and hard-living father of two teenage daughters and loving husband to his wife Janice – was only in his fifties when he realized he had made a big mistake in passing up the opportunity to have a colonoscopy test with his best friend, Lee Einhorn. Because only about a year after having that colonoscopy, he found out he had stage four colon cancer which, if caught earlier, might have been more treatable. Condemn.

With the help of director Tony Benna and a film crew, Ricciardi’s mission is to create, among other goals, an unconventional PSA in the form of this film to persuade (American) viewers not to be idiots like him and to have colonoscopies as much as possible after the age of 45. (In the UK, the procedure is not automatically offered by the NHS, although at-home fecal immunochemical tests are recommended every two years after a certain age.) At one point, Ricciardi even contacted his colleagues at his former advertising agency to advise them on a witty PSA campaign using fruit and other everyday objects with vaguely anus-shaped orifices to raise awareness.

But most of the film consists of Ricciardi battling the dying of the light, recounting the discomfort of recovering from chemo (years of hangovers came in handy, he says), the ridiculous indignities of radiation and other treatments, strange side effects such as eyelashes growing longer than usual, the inept bedside manners of medical professionals, and the administrative errors that punctuate the process. A natural comedian, Ricciardi is well aware that he uses humor as a means of defense. The film follows suit, even going so far as to create playful little stop-motion animated sequences showing a mini-André in all his shaggy glory, dressed in sneakers and a hospital gown, undergoing various treatments.

But as Ricciardi nears the end, he opens up on camera about feelings of heartbreak, rage and sadness. Indeed, the therapist encourages him to “be generous and let [his daughters] feel sad”, and reminds him that he doesn’t have to make them laugh all the time. There’s nothing radical or innovative in this message or in the film presented here, but the honesty of Ricciardi and Janice, as well as that of everyone around him, proves very moving in the long run, emphasizing that there are as many ways to face death as there are to live life.