When their father falls into a coma, two brothers with limited social skills decide that they need to make him happy by finding a woman to give birth to his grandchild.

CRITIQUE

The Brothers Solomon is one of three major comedies in 2007 structured around a pregnancy, and it is by far the least successful; neither the comedy nor the character bits work anywhere near as well as those in Knocked Up or Juno.  Instead, this movie is just too aggressively dumb, though we’re supposed to be amused by the antics of the main characters, their shtick wears thin pretty quickly, and this grows tiresome long before the baby finally pops out.

The tale involves brothers John and Dean Solomon (Will Arnett and Will Forte), who were raised in the Arctic by their father (Lee Majors), nominally explaining why they are so clueless when it comes to women, which becomes a big problem when they try to find a woman to agree to have their child.  Unfortunately, too often here the brothers just come off as moronic rather than naïve; this is really just a one-joke movie, with endless repetitions of these good-hearted guys doing something really stupid.

When the brothers need is to find a girl to have a baby with, the comedy almost works; it’s a plotline that is easy to mine for humor.  But this plot doesn’t last for very long at all, and once they hire surrogate Janine (Kristen Wiig) to have their child, the movie really stalls, because now it’s all about waiting for the baby to be born, and for the guys to figure out how to be good fathers.  But since we never really feel that they should be given this child, it’s hard to care about any of it; too many scenes really don’t go anywhere, without adding enough laughs, while the characters are so broadly drawn that none of it seems real enough to involve us in the story.

Not helping is the fact that neither Arnett nor Forte are really the lead actor type; they are both better in small doses.  They certainly aren’t helped by the characters and story here, particularly since director Bob Odenkirk has them pitch their performances at a hyper, over-the-top level that us just rather wearying.  Ultimately these are two characters who wear out their welcome pretty quick; despite the occasional laugh or two, it’s just not all that fun spending 90 minutes with them.

THE VIDEO

The Brothers Solomon is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen.  The transfer is okay but nothing special.

THE AUDIO

The Brothers Solomon is presented in English 5.1 Dolby Digital, as well as Spanish, Portuguese and Thai 5.1 Dolby Digital and French Dolby Surround.  Dialogue, music and sound effects come through clear.  There are English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean and Thai subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

There is a Commentary with Will Arnett and Will Forte, which is rather disappointing; they are rather low-energy throughout, and there are a lot of places where they stop to watch the movie.

The Making of The Brothers Solomon (16 minutes) is a fairly standard featurette, though there are more laughs-per-minute here than in the movie.

The Fine Art of Creating a Specimen is a negligible 3-minute piece in which the stars of the movie muse about masturbation.

There are 16 minutes of Deleted Scenes, and a few of them are mildly amusing.

FINAL THOUGHT

Even devoted fans of Arnett and Forte are unlikely to find all that much to like here.