André is an Idiot

Few films at the Deauville American film festival 2025 managed to balance irreverent humor and devastating honesty with the same audacity as Tony Benna’s André is an Idiot. At its heart lies André Ricciardi, a wildly eccentric San Francisco advertising executive whose refusal to get a colonoscopy until it was far too late condemned him to stage-four colon cancer. But to call the film a mere public service announcement would be a gross understatement. What Tony Benna achieves is a portrait of a man who turned his own decline into an absurdist final act, embracing death with the same chaotic creativity that defined his life, and in the process leaving behind not only a cautionary tale but also an uplifting meditation on love, humor, and mortality.

The documentary opens with André Ricciardi staring into the camera and recounting what he calls the second-dumbest mistake of his life: as a teenager, he once masturbated against a wooden bathroom counter and ended up with splinters embedded in his penis. That anecdote, shocking and hilarious in equal measure, sets the tone for what follows. His first mistake, of course, was ignoring every recommendation for a colonoscopy. By the time he finally had one, blood loss had forced him into a hospital and doctors revealed the mass that would ultimately end his life. The title itself comes from his mother’s blunt reaction upon learning of his diagnosis: “What a f***ing idiot.” Rather than hide behind euphemisms, André Ricciardi and Tony Benna make idiocy itself the framework for the film — the idiocy of stubbornness, denial, and the illusion of invincibility.

What makes André is an Idiot so affecting is that it refuses to sink into solemnity. André Ricciardi leans into comedy as a survival mechanism, turning chemotherapy into punchlines and finding whimsical absurdity even in the bureaucratic indignities of treatment. He jokes that decades of waking up hungover prepared him perfectly for chemo, and when his eyebrows grow freakishly long as a side effect of medication, he treats it like another gag. His irreverence is bolstered by playful stop-motion animation sequences crafted by collaborators like Trent Shy, which transform moments of horror — colonoscopies, hospital visits, radiation sessions — into surreal, darkly comic vignettes. The score by Dan Deacon only amplifies the oddball energy, refusing to let the film dissolve into despair. The result is a rhythm that feels strangely alive, even as its subject fades before our eyes.

Yet beneath the laughter lies a deeply human story of relationships and resilience. The film paints a moving portrait of Janice Ricciardi, the Canadian bartender who first married André Ricciardi for a green card in the mid-1990s, only for their sham marriage to blossom into genuine love. Together, they raised two daughters, Tallula and Delilah, whose teenage years are shaped by both their father’s humor and his looming absence. There is a heartbreaking intimacy in watching Janice Ricciardi’s transformation from co-conspirator in absurdity to exhausted caregiver, carrying the weight of anticipatory grief while still laughing at her husband’s antics. Equally poignant are the scenes with André Ricciardi’s best friend Lee, whose bond with him provides levity in the darkest moments, whether through hallucinogenic road trips into the desert or primal “death yells” hurled into empty valleys.

What elevates André is an Idiot beyond other “cancer comedies” — films like 50/50 or Me and Earl and the Dying Girl — is its refusal to hide the deterioration of its subject. The camera lingers on the physical toll of illness: the gaunt face, the thinning hair, the skeletal frame of a man who was once all exuberance. At one point, André Ricciardi candidly admits that “dying is boring,” lamenting how his last days are filled with the same banal chores as before — unloading the dishwasher, walking the dog, smoking weed on the couch. That confession, absurd and tragic in equal measure, captures the unique genius of the film. Death here is not cinematic, not noble, not even particularly dramatic. It is repetitive, tedious, and terrifying. And yet, within that banality, André Ricciardi insists on finding humor, as though comedy itself were his final rebellion.

The documentary also functions as an unexpected extension of André Ricciardi’s advertising career. Once responsible for quirky campaigns — including a famous claymation spot with Ozzy Osbourne for Brisk Ice Tea — he uses his final project to design provocative ads promoting colonoscopies. Watching him brainstorm these campaigns with former colleagues, making raunchy visual metaphors out of fruit and balloons, is both inspiring and heartbreaking. He turns his failure to get tested into one last campaign, a PSA that could save lives. As his body betrays him, his adman instincts remain intact: how to take something taboo, ugly, and frightening, and turn it into something people can’t ignore.

The closing moments of André is an Idiot hit with devastating force. A final journal entry, read aloud, reveals not just a man still clinging to humor but one reckoning with the grief he had long deflected. By then, the laughter has softened into silence, and the audience is left to process the inevitability of what we have witnessed. The credits roll with a blunt reminder in white letters across the screen: “Get a f***ing colonoscopy.” Rarely has a message landed so heavily after being delivered with such chaotic warmth.

What Tony Benna achieves in his debut is remarkable. By weaving together whimsical animation, candid confessions, and raw family dynamics, he crafts not just a documentary but a legacy for a man who refused to be defined by his diagnosis. André is an Idiot may have begun as the story of one man’s fatal mistake, but it ends as a celebration of curiosity, humor, and resilience in the face of death. In laughing at his own idiocy, André Ricciardi leaves us all with wisdom. His greatest gift is not the jokes, nor even the ads, but the reminder that we only get one shot at this, and that sometimes the smartest thing you can do is learn from an idiot.

André is an Idiot
Directed by Tony Benna
Produced by André Ricciardi, Tory Tunnell, Joshua Altman, Stelio Kitrilakis, Ben Cotner
Music by Dan Beacon
Cinematography: Ethan Indorf
Edited by Parker Laramie
Production companies : A24, Sandbox Films, Safehouse Pictures
Running time : 88 minutes

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