Twenty years ago, a movie like Brothers would open on a blustery October Friday, make about $15 million on opening weekend, play for about a month as a modest word-of-mouth success and eventually hit Blockbuster shelves for high schoolers to sneak-rent for a howler of a weekend evening with friends.
Far more Farrelly Brothers than Coen Brothers, Brothers is the kind of stupid crime comedy we used to get in bulk, back in the days film studios realized that people enjoyed watching funny movies in theaters with other people.
The cruel irony and/or sign of the times for Brothers is that it opened to little fanfare on Amazon Prime Video last month and has skipped out of the public consciousness as yet another movie skipped over on the routine streaming search. May it not be so, not with the perfect Thanksgiving movie ready to fire up with the adult members of your family you love but can’t always stand to be around.
Brothers is gloriously stupid, a movie so cartoonish and buffoonish that it hides in some pretty relatable themes about how you can’t choose your family, but sometimes, it’d be nice if they chose you for once.
Comedies like this have always been unfairly dinged for their lack of sophistication, as if aiming for the low-hanging fruit to make you belly laugh is some sort of genre crime. Brothers functions perfectly as both a silly farce and an excellent showcase for normally stoic actors to flex their funny bones.
Josh Brolin, Peter Dinklage and Glenn Close aren’t typically the people you see in Happy Madison-y movies, but getting them in a comedy directed by Palm Springs‘ Max Barbakow and written by I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore‘s Macon Blair should’ve been heralded as a grand arrival.
Brolin and Dinklage are irresistible together, as the former plays dorky dad far better than you’d expect and the latter in a refreshingly low-life mode we don’t normally get to see him in. Marisa Tomei shows up for a wacky few scenes, and this is one of the last times we’ll get to see the late, great M. Emmet Walsh show up in the kind of supporting role where he always thrived.
Some NSFW language to follow.
However, the film belongs to recent Oscar winner Brendan Fraser. Fraser has always been a genius at finding his groove in any comedic setting. He’s perfectly capable of playing the smartest and dumbest person in the room, often in the same scene. Here, he gives what just might be the most hysterical performance of his career, one so wild and free in a way we haven’t seen Fraser in so, so long.
Combining the drool-mean menace of Rugrats‘ “Big Boy” Pickles and the foolish tenacity of a yippy puppy that can’t control its bladder, Fraser transforms himself into a Looney Tunes failson goon for the ages. Quite literally every single one of his scenes is funny, throwing in off-kilter line deliveries and gleefully reckless physical comedy to create a go-for-broke performance that is so special.
It’s one of the great recent post-Oscar performances, one so free of any ego and so in love with its own idiocy. Fraser is having unreal amounts of fun again in a good comedy, a wonderful sign nature really is healing.
If you want to turn your brain off for just a bit and enjoy a studio comedy with good actors and wily creative minds behind the camera, Brothers is an oasis in the desert. We need more stupid, mid-budget comedies like this, ones that aren’t doing anything new to make you laugh but still get the giggles in spades.
