Film Reviews

The Brothers Solomon

• Rating:
• Director: Bob Odenkirk
• Starring: Kristen Wiig
• Details: US / 91mins (15A).

Two brothers - Dean (Forte) and John (Arnett) Solomon - aren't exactly ladies' men, so when they promise their comatose father (Lee Majors) that he'll have a grandchild before he dies, the brothers hit the dating scene with some trepidation. A few dinner disasters later, the boys are spent and have no choice but to pay desperate Janine (Wiig) to be a surrogate mother. With the easy part done, the boys face their biggest test yet - what it takes to be dad. Dumb And Dumber meets She's Having A Baby is the pitch for this comedy and although that sounds good in theory, so did communism. It's a two-minute sketch stretched to feature length as tired old jokes are dragged out and thrust into an inept script without even a dusting-down. Saturday Night Live's Forte (who scripted this mess) and Arrested Development's Arnett try too hard to be goofy and just grate on the nerves before that naff and overlong credit sequence is even finished. The funniest thing about this 'comedy' is Chi McBride, who weighs in with a few well-chosen expletives but it's nothing we haven't seen before. Hopefully this will be the last in the line of crap comedies that have been spewed out of Hollywood of late, as producers and writers might take notice of Judd Apatow's bar-raising outings.

Review by Gavin Burke