Brothers - 2.5 Cookays
This movie has the worst trailer ever made. As I'm sure you could probably tell, it pretty much goes over the entire movie for you. From opening shot to finale. This movie only keeps one secret to itself, and while a relatively important plot point, it's inclusion or absense doesn't really alter the proceedings that much. So because the trailer gives everything away, I'm not especially worried about spoilers.
So basically, Spiderman goes off to war, leaving Queen Amadalia to watch after the kiddos. When an accident happens overseas, his brother Donnie Darko is there to watch over the fam and ends up almost laying his wife. There are two problems with this okay setup. One, all of this happens in the first twenty minutes or so. It is too much, too fast before we know or care about any characters here. It's impact is dulled even further by letting us know going in that Spiderman is going to make it home to Amadalya anyway. So not only do they let all this high drama unfold on total strangers to the audience, we don't care anyway because we know how this all wraps up. I won't give away what little there is left, but it's obvious there is no positive way to end this one. This is one of the most down depressing flicks I've seen in ages. Up there with The Killing Fields and Big Mama's House 2.
Even with all these nagging problems, this movie gets away with it to some degree because our three leads have friggin great performances. I liked watching these three act out this story. Spiderman's post war freak out on Donnie is awesome. It looks like he lost a ton of weight like Batman did for that Machinest flick. His cheeks are sunken and his eyes are hollow. Total creeper, in a good way. This movie even skates around what is normally a huge problem with child actors. These two little girls who's names I'm too lazy to look up are excellent. The best I've seen in ages, especially the older one. They really hold their own.
3 Things I Liked About This Movie:
-Queen Amidala having long hair again
-Great performances, even from the kids
-I like seeing Spiderman in pain. I liked pretending it was pennance for Spiderman 3.
3 Things I Didn't Like About This Movie:
-Debbie. Downer.
-Zero surprises
-Way overlong, especially considering the trailer told the story in two minutes.
Netflix it if you're really, really interested.
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