Director: Tony Benna
Stars: André Ricciardi, Janice Ricciardi, Tommy Chong
Synopsis: Andre, an irreverent man, embarks on an unexpected journey after receiving a terminal diagnosis, determined to maintain his humor while learning to die happily.
André is an Idiot is one of the most challenging reviews I’ve had to write. Two years ago, I lost my father to lung cancer. The attempts to find any sense of levity while watching someone suffer can be as difficult as searching for oxygen on Mars. The trauma of watching a loved one succumb to cancer is indescribable. Yet, André Ricciardi spent his last days finding the humor and optimism in the final stretch.
He opens the documentary with an embarrassing story about accidentally getting splinters in his genitals and using tweezers to solve the problem because he was afraid to tell his family. He goes on to say that it used to be the stupidest decision of his life until he skipped getting a colonoscopy at 50. The story is crude, hilarious, and transparently shows how shameless André is in every aspect of his life. Simultaneously, it informs the documentary’s agenda: the potential to save someone.
Directed by Tony Benna, the documentary centers on André Ricciardi, a dying man with a personality as frizzy and animated as his hair. After discovering he has stage four colon cancer, André decides to document his fight to stay alive. During the first set of interviews, André remarks about his own hypocrisy for making a documentary about his condition. For him, if it were anyone else, André says he would call it a terrible idea. But for André, it’s another reason to laugh about the situation. It clearly reads as a method for him to cope with the diagnosis, while showing the importance of getting a colonoscopy.
The setup further establishes the support André has around him. There is a heartfelt introduction to his wife, Janice, who fell in love with André by accident. Janice, a bar owner, required a marriage to stay in the United States, and André jokes that he volunteered to marry Janice for the venue benefits. The resulting fake marriage began as fraudulent, then slowly became something real. The green card marriage led to a successful life, with careers and a child. But as many accidental correct choices as he made in life, his biggest accidental choice was avoiding the colonoscopy months after his 50th birthday. A decision that might have saved his life if he had taken the plunge right away.
Most documentaries have a bleakness with the subject matter. However, André approaches cancer like another whimsical adventure. For instance, after a round of chemo, André jokes about the frizzy hair falling from his head. And he comments that the hairball simply appears to him as a fuzzy character. The documentary then uses stop-motion to bring André’s chemo hair to life. The documentary also uses stop-motion claymation in the vein of Wallace & Gromit to reenact hypothetical and real-life scenarios that occurred off-camera. One of these sequences involves André, musing about a time when he was getting radiation on his butt. The day of treatment, he went to vote and received an “I Voted” sticker. André’s bright idea was to place the sticker right on the “hole” to make the doctor laugh. While he explains this, we see a laser fire at the butt of a clay version of André.
As evidenced by the “I Voted” sticker, André is highly self-aware of his absurdist personality and embraces it without apology. It’s André’s energy that makes the tone feel refreshing. There is almost no scene in the documentary that does not feature him smiling in some form. Even when his condition worsens and he is in more pain, we rarely see a frown. André is an Idiot also includes one of the year’s most moving segments. He visits a teacher who specializes in helping students practice their last words (or the “death yell,” as the teacher calls it). The setting is beautiful, with mountainous hills that echo in the background against a setting sun. The goal, as the instructor explains, is to prepare for those final words. What begins sincerely becomes comedic as André and his friend Lee start screaming nonsensical statements from the hilltop.
His main profession was advertising. One of the last things he did was launch a campaign to encourage colonoscopies. The theme featured objects that resemble butts or anuses, with words reminding individuals to get theirs. For close to ninety minutes, the journey of André’s cancer battle unfolds in this comical manner. He is so personable and joyful about it all that it almost feels foreign. Typically, with death or if someone is dying, there is an aura of depression circling the atmosphere. For André, it was greeted like another wild adventure to find joy and laughter.
For close to ninety minutes, the film breezes through endless comedic segments with great sincerity, and the result is one of the most inspiring depictions of cancer you’ll ever see. It’s also one of the bravest documents of someone fighting terminal cancer. As mentioned, André is an Idiot is one of the most difficult reviews I’ve had to tackle personally. Like André’s daughter, I saw my own father suffer through his last moments. And for a while, it made the idea of perceiving the final chapter feel uneasy. However, I do believe André is an Idiot could change the ending for someone. That in those final moments, when facing the battle against the grim reaper himself, someone will find joy in “Rick Rolling” the angel of death instead of surrendering. I believe that is what André would have wanted.
