Several years ago, I was discussing with some friends how Hollywood is remaking/rebooting movies or doing too many legacy sequels. I told them I could imagine a sequel or remake of Twins but this time it’s Peter Dinklage and Dwayne Johnson. I’m sure the idea went around the Hollywood executives. But the talks fizzled.
However, in Hollywood, you can tweak just enough to avoid lawsuits. The 1980s horror movies Bad Dreams has so much in common with the third Nightmare on Elm Street I’m surprised Robert Shaye and Wes Craven didn’t sue. Both movies were set in mental health hospitals for late teens that seem to commit suicide for unknown reasons. And both starred Jennifer Rubin and both had villains who were badly burned.
The first Mission: Impossible and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Eraser had similar plot elements down to the ending where the villains die in an explosion on train tracks. Both movies are about government agents who are double-crossed by their mentors played by veteran actors. Jon Voight is in Mission: Impossible while James Caan is in Eraser. Both characters played by Tom Cruise and Schwarzenegger pretend to be emergency first-responders so they can infiltrate a highly secure area to make a digital hard copy of very confidential information.
But Brothers seems to make some changes. Here, Dinklage does play the more street smart but criminal brother Jady Munger while Josh Brolin is the more gullible bigger brother, Moke. Yet here, the two fraternal twins are very much aware of each other’s existence. They are also estranged from their mother, Cath (Glenn Close), who left them when they were kids as she was running from law enforcement.
In an opening prologue a younger Cath, played by Jennifer Landon, was with a lowlife criminal, Glenn (Joshua Mikel) in 1992 on the run from law officers in rural Georgia. They had some emeralds they had stolen which Glenn swallowed thinking it would keep police from getting it. Instead, it killed him. Cath made a break from the police but she buried Glenn hoping to dig up his body at a later date.
Yet, 30 years have passed. Moke has turned his life around and is married to a wife, Abby (Taylour Paige who barely appears). Jady gets released by a corrupt prison guard, Jimmy Fargul (Brendan Fraser), working for his father, a corrupt judge (M. Emmett Walsh in his final role). Pretty much it’s the same elements as Twins, except more R-rated such as scenes of an orangutan masturbating.
However, Brothers does tone down the raunchy factor. It’s not total frat boy humor. Macon Blair, who made the wonderful I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, adds the same outrageousness to the script on a story idea by Etan Cohen, who also co-wrote Idiocracy. I’d argue the movie knows it’s trying for the most crazy tone ever to place a bunch of well-respected actors in. Dinklage has won four Primetime Emmys. Fraser has won an Oscar as well as Marisa Tomei who plays a prison pen pal Bethesda Waingro who has the vulgar orangutan. Brolin has gone from being a former child actor to an Oscar nominated actor. And Close and Walsh are very respected as two veterans.
Sometimes, actors just need to have a fun movie to do. And since there’s not many stand-up comics in the cast trying to get the last joke in, everything flows easily. I laughed at the outrageous story. Dinklage is obviously having fun. He has great comic timing as he’s shown in Death at a Funeral and Living in Oblivion. And Brolin mostly reacts but it works mostly the way it did as Cable in Deadpool 2. I’m not believing these two men, both in their mid-50s in real life are playing men in their early 40s. Then again, both DeVito and Schwarzenegger were in their 40s playing men in their 30s in Twins.
In the end, I think Brothers is one of those movies you just feel like watching when you’ve had a long day or rough week, so you throw your feet up on the couch and chill for about 90 minutes while eating pizza or Chinese food. Movies are supposed to be entertaining. It lacks the wit of an Albert Brooks comedy and that’s ok.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 