|
|
Film
|
|
The Not Ready for Primetime Players
In the wake of Andy Samberg’s $13.7 million lap around the August box office track comes an even more tepid September comedy co-starring Will Forte. The specter of Dana Carvey’s film career looms.
Friday, September 7, 2007 at 9:40 PM
By Brent Simon
|
|
|
Screen Gems
Photo
|
|
A pale echo of Knocked Up, Superbad
|
|
As self-centered illusionist Gob Bluth on the brilliant if short-lived sitcom Arrested Development, Will Arnett wrung laughs out of his character’s flamboyant combination of insecurity, competitiveness and showmanship. During his career as both a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live, Will Forte has shown a penchant for embracing the absurd — whether in recurring bits as soft-voiced politician Tim Calhoun and the bearded, woodsy loner known as the Falconer, or in a sketch last year with Peyton Manning in which he played a high school coach who delivers his halftime stump speech in the form of an extended, goofy, improvisational dance.
While each actor has appeared in a couple movies up to this point - most notably Arnett in this spring’s $100 million-plus hit Blades of Glory, opposite wife Amy Poehler - both performers are trying to find their way when it comes to movies. In a way, they’re each attempting to follow in the footsteps of SNL alumnus Will Ferrell, who, largely courtesy of his golden touch with intense himbo vacuousness, has successfully transitioned from small screen funnyman to someone that audiences would actually pay to see on the big screen.
The lesser Wills’ joint bet is The Brothers Solomon, with Forte and Arnett as two goodhearted but romantically challenged brothers who decide to try to father a baby in order to give their coma-stricken father (Lee Majors) something to live for. Coming on the heels of both Knocked Up and Superbad earlier this summer, The Brothers Solomon combines elements of the former’s prenatal hijinks with rudiments of the latter’s fraternal bonding.
|
|
Screen Gems
Photo
|
|
Ultra light comedy sounds
|
|
|
While there’s a pinch of Dumb & Dumber-style comedy to the proceedings, John (Arnett) and Dean (Forte) are mostly just socially inept yet still somehow unflappably, unfailingly positive-minded. After a string of dates leave them still unable to find a woman ‘to enter,’ as John puts it, the undeterred siblings change tactics and place an online ad for a surrogate partner on Craigslist. Janine (Kristen Wiig) responds to the brothers’ entreaty and, for a hefty fee, agrees to carry a child to term for them, even as John works on a back-up plan in the form of neighbor Tara (Malin Ackerman, of the forthcoming The Heartbreak Kid).
As the pregnancy progresses and Dean and John embark on an ill-advised crash-course of their own devising on parenting, Janine and her ex-but-now-on-again boyfriend James (Chi McBride) - a strange fourth wheel in the relationship - eventually begin to warm to the brothers’ full-court-press enthusiasm.
The seeds of The Brothers Solomon date back to a pilot script, Dos Hermanos, that Forte penned for television production company Carsey-Werner prior to segueing over to writing jobs on 3rd Rock From the Sun and That ’70s Show. When Forte joined the improv comedy troupe The Groundlings and was tapped by producer Lorne Michaels to join Saturday Night Live, Carsey-Werner agreed to let Forte out of his deal, but not without leaving behind the screenplay which would eventually evolve into The Brothers Solomon. (There was never anything Spanish about the siblings; Forte just thought the original title was more exotic than simply “Two Brothers.”)
|
|
Screen Gems
Photo
|
|
(l t r) Director Bob Odenkirk, producer Matt Berenson
|
|
|
That the film’s characters and relationships are fairly thinly sketched isn’t especially surprising, but there’s little about Janine and James — apart from director Bob Odenkirk’s apparent affinity for McBride as a frequent collaborator, and the physical juxtaposition of a large black man next to Wiig — to compellingly connect them to this story. They get swept up in John and Dean’s lives really without question or regard for how it impacts their own lives, meaning for much of the movie there’s a strange absence of conflict or tension.
Some of the script’s few baroque touches — like the fact that the brothers, upon hearing that their father is in the hospital, hurriedly stop by the video store to dispute a late charge on a rental of Ulee’s Gold, or the repeated use of the surging theme song from St. Elmo’s Fire — make for nice laughs, but, for the most part, The Brothers Solomon is a showcase presentation; the filmic equivalent of a performance-centric one-man show that just happens to be a dual vehicle. Powered by waxy, perpetual smiles, the brothers’ serial oddness could be taken as creepy, and probably would be a bit more were it not for the magnanimity of Arnett and Forte’s portrayals.
|
|
Screen gems
Photo
|
|
Surrogate comedy partner Wiig
|
|
|
So, do these grinning buffoons augur good things for their stars? For Forte, leading man stardom seems a long shot. He writes a lot of his own material, which, odd as it may seem, appears doubly a hindrance, first because he’s more at ease doing that rather than tackling strictly acting gigs, and also because his comedy is rooted in earnestness and subtle reversal. While fellow SNL cast member Andy Samberg’s Hot Rod was a recent box office wash-out, it showcased the sort of outlandishness and theatricality that frequently lends itself to colorful characters.
For Arnett, the odds seem better in some ways, but a bit longer in others. Small screen stars typically have trouble shaking their sitcom personas en route to mainstream embrace as a movie star. (One recent notable exception is Steve Carell, who had the benefit of chiefly sending up talking-head fatuousness on The Daily Show.) Arnett is fresh to many folks since Arrested Development was such a niche hit, but with his high hairline and devilish eyes, he still seems pegged mostly for smarmy comedic villain types — the dependable foil rather than the leading man. After all, even in The Brothers Solomon, his character’s sweetness is counterbalanced by his (real-life) smoker’s rasp.
Arnett’s best bets for break-out are likely Most Likely to Succeed, a high school reunion flick, directed by the Joe and Anthony Russo, about a guy who tells a series of half-truths and lies to the former girl of his dreams, or The Ambassador, a The Man Who Knew Too Little-type comedy about a bumbling diplomat who finds himself in the thick of some international intrigue. If Arnett makes it big, it will be in material more barbed and unctuous; The Brothers Solomon, then, will represent an atypical confection.
|
|
|
|
|
 Email
|
 Print
|
|
|
|
|
|