BROTHERS (2024)

The problem with Brothers, the second feature film by director Max Barbakow (Palm Springs), isn’t that it fails to be funny. It’s that it hardly ever tries to be. Protagonists Moke (Josh Brolin) and Jady Munger (Peter Dinklage) both start off as the straight man, and only after such a significant portion of time has passed that the film’s lost its intrigue does one of them deviate from this role.

Brothers‘ occasionally ridiculous antics, which can only be commended for resembling comedy rather than succeeding at it, are mostly found in the over-the-top behaviour of man-child side character Farful (Brendan Fraser). Farful’s the sort of creation that belongs in a movie from at least two decades ago, that you watch again years later and shake your head at for ever finding funny. It turns out that watching a stupid character cry or scream or thrash their body isn’t inherently humourous on its own, though Brothers doesn’t come to this realisation.

The movie follows two brothers whose lives are forever impacted by their mother’s lawlessness, even after she abandons her children for a lucrative money-making scheme. Her highly illegal ventures inspire Moke and Jady to pursue a life of theft, though Moke turns his life around after Jady is arrested during one of their robberies. When Jady arrives back in Moke’s life after a five-year prison stint, surprising viewers as much as it does Moke to see his brother conversing with his wife Abby (Taylour Paige), there’s no pretence that this is a compelling turn of events. Even when the film has already breezed through a childhood backstory, a series of robberies culminating in one of the brothers facing prison time, and a five-year prison sentence, Brothers is still strictly in ‘set up’ mode.

Audiences waiting for this story to kick into gear will be left with an unwelcome surprise, as even when Jady announces his reasons for showing back up in Moke’s life the movie struggles to justify its existence. This story feels as if it is hanging by a thread for the first half of its runtime, which is partly down to how insincerely it sketches out Moke’s life. Both Moke and Abby are similar in that they have overcome past issues to become entirely different people, and are looking forward to their new life even as they anxiously await their baby shower. Abby is terrified the event will go badly, which is of course a confirmation to the audience that it will end in disaster.

When it does, it’s through a fight between Moke and Jady, after the former catches his brother smoking weed not far from the partygoers. This brief scuffle, which is seen by an embarrassed Abby and her stern, judgy father, isn’t the slightest bit awkward or cringy. It doesn’t relish in the tension of Moke being too blinded by rage to recognise that he has caused a scene, only to come to this realisation when it is far too late to alter his faux pas. It also contains no dramatic momentum, which is necessary for a story about a man whose commitment towards changing his ways keeps being compromised by his wayward brother showing up in his life.

Speaking of which, a great (and obvious) subject for eliciting tension is ignored completely, with Moke being significantly older than Abby (Brolin and Paige were born over two decades apart). As if it isn’t incredulous enough for Abby’s father that his daughter is shacked up with a man significantly older than her, his son-in-law is still too emotionally immature to make a good impression at an important social function. Brothers isn’t the kind of film that particularly cares about drama, but given that there are moments later in the movie where it half-heartedly tries to drudge up emotional investment, it’s bizarre that it makes no such efforts in its first act.

After Moke is fired from his job he reluctantly accepts Jady’s offer to embark on a heist mission together, which the latter promises will be a quick and easy affair. It’s something of a nothing-burger until a bear shows up in the story—for whatever reason–inspiring a crude gag reminiscent of early-2000s comedies that seems totally at odds with everything that preceded this scene. The only other facet of Brothers that keeps up with this crude absurdity is Brendan Fraser’s performance, which is dialled up to 101 as he screams his way through scenes. His overacting is occasionally successful, but more often than not the inane screeching goes nowhere.

Brothers is unlikely to provoke laughter, with each scene being just as forgettable as the one before it. Even when new elements and characters are introduced the plot stays paper-thin. It’s a seriously missed opportunity to make Dinklage the straight man in the film, as he doesn’t say or do anything that even passes as an attempt at humour. He’s simply there. As the sibling more invested in pursuing a life of crime, one would think that there would be an edge or a wildness to the character that makes him intriguing despite his natural tendency to be a screw-up, but no such traits are present. Bizarrely, he’s the film’s narrator, with his voiceover bookending the film, despite Moke being the one who undergoes the hero’s journey.

After abandoning his wife for what he hopes is a very temporary dip into criminality, the ultimate moral test in Brothers is whether or not Moke has it in him to stick to the good, simple life he has been diligently carving out for himself and Abby. As the narrative continues, his self-pitying, though understandable, is exaggerated to the extent that the character turns into a bit of a manchild, making his criminal brother the foil character for many scenes. Aside from this squandering any attempt at emotional investment, these sequences are absurdly forgettable. There are twists here and there in the story that should make us care about the unfortunate situation Moke has become tied up in, but the approach towards conveying these developments is so transparently half-assed that it doesn’t even seem like the creatives behind the project cared about them.

The same issue plagues this entire movie, which is so unremarkable that by its conclusion one gets the sense that those involved in Brothers’ post-production were sick and tired of stitching together its scenes. One of the more obvious examples of how eager these creatives were for this dire project to end occurs when a feeble attempt at a heart-warming reunion maintains its musical cues when it cuts to a conversation between the film’s protagonists hours later. Both scenes share similarities—they take place in the same house and have an identical tone—but they should be of enough importance that the lowkey background music can grind to a halt for at least a few seconds.

These scenes are so lazily rolled into one another that the film’s conclusion feels like it’s in a state of panicked desperation to reach the end credits. When it does, the effect is not necessarily merciful. For as resoundingly flat as this movie falls, it isn’t a torturous experience to watch. But it creates a void where proper commentary should rest when reflecting on its story, providing one of the most unmemorable cinematic experiences in recent years.

This film contains a stellar cast—Brolin, Dinklage, Fraser, Glenn Close (The Big Chill) and Marisa Tomei (Spider-Man: No Way Home)—but it’s impossible to praise their performances when they’re given so little to work with. All of these talented actors do a commendable job of attempting to breathe life into stilted characters, which are about as stale as the film itself. Only Fraser, through the ridiculous antics afforded to the character, occasionally transcends the movie’s vacuity, but that’s not a knock on any of the other actors. This story simply has no legs on which to stand, while there’s nothing about its delivery that transcends bland, graceless competence.

USA | 2024 | 88 MINUTES | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Max Barbakow.
writer: Macon Blair (story by Etan Cohen).
starring: Josh Brolin, Peter Dinklage, Marisa Tomei, Glenn Close, Taylour Paige, Brendan Fraser, M. Emmet Walsh & Jennifer Langdon.