Film

The Brothers Solomon (2007)

Director: Bob Odenkirk

Movie review

From Time Out New York

Wow, what a stillborn. Hit-or-miss SNL funnyman Will Forte writes and costars in this negligibly promising sketch-comedy joke about baby-rearing that gets hammered to death by inane execution, absurdly unrealistic circumstances and two genuinely creepy performances by the male leads.

Home-schooled brothers (Arnett and Forte) raised in isolation at the North Pole are relentlessly chipper but socially maladroit, making them lifelong roommates and emotionally stunted adults incapable of sustaining even the briefest romantic conversation without weirding out or insulting their date. Because their widower father muttered a regret about no grandchildren before slipping into a coma, his two boys hope to help Dad pull through by finding a woman desperate enough to carry their seed for cash. Heartwarming, right?

Thanks to Knocked Up and Superbad, clown king Judd Apatow has already bookended the summer with two wildly successful statements on, respectively, childbirth and losing one’s virginity. The Brothers Solomon tries to tackle both, and it’s the film’s misfortune to be released in the same season. Then again, there’s no good time of the year for such a depressingly insincere movie that shirks any sense of reality but still desperately claws for emotional redemption at the end. Better to abort next time.