Review of Brothers

Introduction

Having heard some pretty poor reviews about this movie, I watched it with trepidation. And yes, it is indeed that bad.

The story is about 7 ‘blokes’ with impossibly stupid nicknames (see the blurb above) who go on a lads` holiday to Greece. And that’s it. There is a pointless little side-storyline about finding one’s “inner self”, but that is pure crap.

Basically, this movie must have tried to latch on to the surprise success of “Kevin and Perry” last year, and failed miserably. As a gross-out comedy, it is not even funny, as this kind of humour can be like in "Men Behaving Badly". Even the opening scene (one of the worst ideas I have ever seen) is a blatant copy of “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”, but ends up looking like something from a drama wishing it could get on Channel 5.

Video

The picture is absolutely terrible! Think of the softest, most unfocussed picture you could get, mess up all the colours and tones and this is what you get. I think the publishers must have gone out of their way to find the worst master they could get (VHS?) and put it onto disc.

Audio

The sound is only in stereo, and does what it is basically supposed to do, which is to carry dialogue – but then it couldn’t possibly be worse than the picture. The soundtrack is the best thing about the movie, and features many good tunes – including the one song that everyone would associate with a lads` movie, Chumbwumba`s "I Get Knocked Down".

Features

You might think, judging from the poor film, picture and sound, that there would be no extras save for some menus and if you’re lucky, a trailer. Actually, there is quite a good selection of extras here. The documentary is surprisingly good, with cast and crew interviews and some “unseen footage” that was somehow not good enough to be in the final cut (I found this hard to believe). The commentary is also informative although slightly boring. I haven’t a clue why someone would want to listen to it though – “I wonder how they made that vomit look so realistic? I know, I’ll listen to the director tell me how!”

To round things off there is a music video, and a trailer. In fact, if you watched the trailer you would have the whole movie right there, and save two hours of your life.

Conclusion

“Brothers” is a really bad movie, although I must admit I did laugh at some of the funnier toilet gags. And I did laugh when I heard on the commentary how director Martin Dunkerton seems to believe that he has made an actual serious movie, one that took a lot of inspiration and planning. Avoid this one; it’s another Brit-flick disaster.