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

2026-02-04 - 09:25

A cancer diagnosis becomes the catalyst for gallows humour, rage and hard-won emotional openness in a disarmingly frank film about how to say goodbye There are about a zillion films – fiction, nonfiction, and everything in between – about people coping with cancer, so kudos to the team behind this one for finding a relatively fresh way to tackle the subject. San Francisco-resident André Ricciardi – a constantly wisecracking former advertising executive, a semi-reformed hard-living hedonist, and father of two teenage girls and loving husband to wife Janice – was only in his early 50s when he realised that he’d made a big mistake when he passed up the chance to have a colonoscopy test with his best friend, Lee Einhorn. Because only a year or so on from when he would have had that colonoscopy, he found out that he has stage four colon cancer which had it been spotted earlier might have been more treatable. Damn. With assistance from director Tony Benna and a film crew, Ricciardi goes on a mission to create, among other goals, an unconventional public service announcement in the form of this film to persuade (American) viewers not to be idiots like him and get colonoscopies whenever possible after the age of 45. (In the UK, the procedure isn’t automatically offered by the NHS, although home faecal immunochemical tests are recommended every couple of years after a certain age.) At one point, Ricciardi even hooks up with his colleagues at his old advertising agency to advise on a witty PSA campaign using fruit and other everyday objects with vaguely anus-shaped orifices to raise awareness. Continue reading...