2025 Sundance Film Festival Movie Review: André Is an Idiot

André Is an Idiot opens with our subject André telling a story about how he once had an incident in which he was masturbating and he ended up with splinters in his privates. I’m not going to get into detail about the story, but he closes it by saying that this would have been the stupidest moment in his life but then he skipped getting a colonoscopy and was then diagnosed with stage four colon cancer.

André Is an Idiot is a comedic and heartbreaking documentary about André Ricciardi and his journey with terminal colon cancer. André is introduced with the masturbation story and it sets the table for who he was: brash, irreverent, funny, and eccentric. André, a former advertising guru, is a man who has always done whatever he’s wanted however he wanted. He married his wife when she was a bartender in need of a green card and the two fell in love after they cheated on an episode of The Newly Wed Game. He would read books like Helter Skelter to his children, and the family thinks hugging each other is strange.

When he was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer, instead of wallowing in sadness, André decided to document his journey and go out how he wanted to. Director Tony Benna captures André’s journey to death with an energy and style that could only match our subject. The movie moves at a snappy beat, keeping with the energy that André exudes at the beginning of the film. But as André becomes sicker and his life begins to slow down, so does the movie, allowing us to be more with André during his final moments. There are also some unique scenes of stop-motion animation to help illustrate some of André’s stories or dreams as well as a scene where André casts Tommy Chong to play his father, as his father is a very private person who did not want to be in the documentary.

While it all might seem fun and hilarious, André Is an Idiot is still a film about a man dying of cancer and Benna doesn’t shy away from the effect it has on André’s life. He shows us chemotherapy sessions, the progressive weight loss and hair loss, and interviews and moments with André’s family that keep us centered and don’t allow us to forget that we are watching a man dying. Benna’s balance of humor and sadness keeps the film amusing without it ever taking away from the seriousness of what is happening to the subject.

André Is an Idiot is unlike any documentary I have ever seen. I have never seen a documentary about such a dark subject be so funny and energetic. Thanks to Benna’s inventive filmmaking and a unique subject full of energy and humor until his final days, André Is an Idiot is ridiculously entertaining, undeniably sweet, and a great PSA to get a colonoscopy.

André Is an Idiot premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition program at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

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