Ideal Home review – It will warm your cockles

So, what’s it about?

Paul (Rudd) and Erasmus (Coogan), are a bickering couple with an extravagant lifestyle. Film sets, dinner parties, spontaneous cocaine, and soon to be lavish kids birthday parties. Erasmus’s delinquent – yet also a fully grown ass man, son Beau (Jake McDorman) has been nicked, he’s in the clink, but he has a son, a ten year old son by the name of… Bill (Jack Gore), that’s what he’s decided, it’s Bill. Not that Erasmus knew he was a grand-daddy and neither he, nor Paul, are ready to become responsible care-givers of a 10 year old kid. The kid’s hardly pumping the air about it either. There’s a bit of his Dad in him, as you’d expect, there’s a real threat that he could follow in his delinquent dads footsteps and act like a delinquent when he becomes a fully grown ass man.

So what do you do when your ten year old grandson turns up on your doorstep? Erasmus and Paul take responsibility in their own Paul and Erasmus way but the strains and stresses show for each person as they learn to adapt, as they learn to play family, eventually learning that it’s not something that you play, but something that you commit to, a lesson they learn from their ten year old teacher. The film is sprinkled with comedy throughout, keeping a lighthearted approach to the impactful and important discoveries of what fundamentally matters to you. What we think matters and what we want, maybe we can do without. What we’ve never considered before, we may realise we simply cannot live without.

So, what did we think?

Steve Coogan and Paul Rudd are the couple you never knew you needed. They fit like a glove, like wine and cheese, like champagne and more champagne, there’s something about these two characters that just works! Fight they might, but that intangible connection draws them together. Coogan and Rudd play their characters well, with just the right amount of fabulousness which could have been a concern had they fallen into the temptation of overplaying. Ideal Home is a dramedy, a fine balance of drama and comedy. It will give you multiple giggles, and warm your cockles, as it reels out an homage to family and ideal homes, in this case same-sex couples and their families, fitting and thriving together not because they’re perfect, but because they’re united.

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Written by Ronnie Swainston

A jet-setter with a love for sci-fi, Star Wars and Clexacon (look it up), Ronnie is a boss babe who likes to wind down with one (probably three) gin cocktails. Too often found trawling Instagram for cocktail and fashion inspo, her phone is full of #nailedit fails plus pictures of her fave people.

Favourite place she’s worked: New York City