The Brothers Solomon DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

This is yet another one I wasn't looking forward to. I've never been a huge fun of either Will Arnett or Will Forte and the two in a movie together about some socially-retarded brothers trying to make a baby for their dying father... didn't appeal to me at all. While this does have more heart than I was expecting, it really doesn't have much of anything else.

This is kind of odd to explain. I did like the chemistry between the brothers Arnett, who plays John, and Forte, who plays Dean, but I really didn't like their performances that much at all. They're those weird, always-happy people who are so naive and happy all the time that, even if you're in a good mood, their overkill of happiness causes an inverse affect on those around them. It doesn't happen like that in the movie, of course (well, it kind of does, actually), but that's the way I feel about that.

Besides Forte and Arnett's chemistry, the sole bright spot was Kristen Wiig, who plays Janine, the surrogate mother for the Solomon baby. Chi McBride has a few solid moments as Janine's boyfriend James, but it's just so weird to see Chi McBride try to act all gangster-like. The only other notable person here is hottie Malin Ackerman who is pretty damn dull as Tara, the unrequited object of John's affections. She's basically there for eye candy. We do get plenty of that, but not much else. I did like Jenna Fischer's one scene in the flick, and it made me wonder why they didn't go after her for a bigger role.

Forte wrote the script and even though he goes way too far with a lot of the dialogue, basically the comic equivalent of beating a dead horse with almost every gag, the core of the story does have more heart to it, and it is essentially a fairly sweet story about some unconventional brothers and trying to make their dying father proud. Still... while there was a chuckle had here and there (especially with the airplane banner sign part), its a largely unlaughable movie.

The Brothers Solomon wasn't quite as bad as I thought it'd be... but just by a very small bit.

We don't get much here, but we start off with nine Deleted Scenes. Guess how many of them are worth deletion? Yeah, all nine. It's 15 minutes you'll never get back. Bam.

The only other thing we get on this moronic disc is a Creating the Perfect Specimen featurette. This basically features Arnett, Forte and Wiig sitting around and talking about masturbation. It's not funny at all. It only lasts about three minutes as well, so if you really need to kill three minutes... I'd still try to do something else besides watch this.

The disc is presented in the widescreen format in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio.

The sound is done through the Dolby Digital 5.1 format.

The front cover is kind of creepy. We have the title card at the top with a bright yellow background and Will Arnett in a bright blue shirt and an upside-down Will Forte in a bright red shirt and it just looks creepy to me. You know, like the first time you saw the Burger King ads with that King standing outside your window. Yeah, that kind of creepy. The back has a synopsis, some pictures from the flick, a small special features box and the billing block and tech specs. Yawn.

The Brothers Solomon is a very odd quirky comedy that has a little too much of the odd, and not nearly enough of the comedy.