Written and directed by neophyte Gary Hardwick, “The Brothers” seems to be
ripped from the pages of titles such as “Men Cry in the Dark” and “Cheaters”
and stitched together into an episodic tribute to paperback soap operas.
A quartet of yuppies (Morris Chestnut, Bill Bellamy, D.L. Hughley, Shemar
Moore) embarks on variations of the same sexual crisis — commitment. It’s a
fear older than old-school, and Hardwick has no particular insight into the
problem, just a lot of delightfully filthy exchanges that seem as though they
have fallen out of Terry McMillan’s Gucci bag.
Each bit of unsolicited advice smacks of that ticked-off, self-aggrandized
talk-show audience member making a grab for Montel Williams’ microphone. And
so time with “The Brothers” is less like watching a movie than it is like
being accosted by one. Still, if anyone is going to preach in the church of
commitment, by Oprah, let it be Jenifer Lewis!
She plays Chestnut’s achy-breaky sex kitten of a mother, and she may as
well be ordained in matters of the loins. Lewis, who played William H. Macy’s
exasperated spouse in “Mystery Men,” doesn’t simply ignite this movie, she
funks it up, shoplifting it as if by force of habit. The curious thing about
“The Brothers” is how for-the-sisters it is. Aside from Chestnut, the women do
all the best work — from Lewis and Marla Gibbs to “Bring It On’s” Gabrielle
Union, Tamala Jones (”The Wood”) and Tatyana Ali, who spearheads the most
uproariously vulgar confab. They’re hip to all the sermons — almost until the
movie seems to be preaching to its own choir.
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This film contains sexual situations and raw language.
– Wesley Morris
‘TOO MUCH SLEEP’
Comedy. Starring Marc Palmieri. Written and directed by David Maquiling.
(Not rated. 80 minutes. At the Lumiere.)
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David Maquiling’s first feature, “Too Much Sleep,” has the low-budget look
of “My First Indie,” but the film also draws the fine line between art-house
quirk and artistic idiosyncrasy.
The title hints at the drowsy surrealism in Maquiling’s filmmaking: all
sleep, little dream. His protagonist is Jack (Marc Palmieri), a slacking man-
boy who appears to be sleeping his life away — crammed in the twin bed of his
youth. His introduction comes during a neighborhood stroll so lethargic he may
as well be sleepwalking.
On a bus one afternoon, the paper bag with his lunch and his dead father’s
unlicensed revolver is swiped in a scam pulled by a mother-daughter team. He
spends the movie chasing workaday suspects trying to get it back, following
leads that take him from step aerobics to a gay strip club. The low-key search
becomes a proving ground for Jack’s drowsily arrested development, spurred on
by a visit to Eddie (Pasquale Gaeta), the former crook who’s some retirement-
age Sancho Panza.
As the gun’s status graduates from the concrete, felonious “stolen” to the
more metaphysical “missing,” the film moves from mere dreamlessness to its own
weird magic. Maquiling fuses the loner-driven, vagary-obsessed fiction of
Kafka and Schnitzler into an earthbound piece of suburban New Jersey diner-to-
lawn domestica. The movie is as modestly unpretentious as David O. Russell’s
“Spanking the Monkey.”
Martin Scorsese tried something not altogether different with “After Hours.
” But Scorsese was interested in (surprise) the violent glee of keeping
Griffin Dunne on a Freudian pulley for one night. Maquiling is a less bruising
showoff: He just wants to airbrush time.
– Wesley Morris