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Though it features cast members of the current, moribund Saturday Night Live, The Brothers Solomon is not a movie based on an SNL sketch.
But it has the desperation of one, that is, if you're involved in it you're stuck with a premise that is just not that funny and "beloved" characters that are the same. But contracts have been signed, the film production machinery is in motion, and everybody is obligated to beat, for 90 painful minutes, a painfully stupid dead horse.
Frankly, this is one of those failures that is doubly disappointing when you consider the calibre of the failees -- co-star Will Arnett being a standout on the brilliant Arrested Development and director Bob Odenkirk hailing from the legendary alt-comedy sketch series Mr. Show.
Written by SNL castmember Will Forte, The Brothers Solomon stars Forte and Arnett (the Wills you hire when you can't afford Will Ferrell) as John and Dean Solomon, a pair raised in the Arctic by their widowed dad ( at "0 degrees latitude, 0 degrees longitude" according to the movie. Sorry guys, 0 degrees latitude is the equator).
There they achieved PhDs via homeschooling, but lack the social prep to know that farting is impolite (which should have been covered in childhood by their Robert Munsch syllabus) and that women are turned off by aggressive horndogs with idiot grins (just one screening of A Night at the Roxbury would have covered that).
Indeed, for the first half-hour or so of The Solomon Brothers, the movie seems poised to be a spectacularly inept and treacly mash of Roxbury and Dumb And Dumber, with two remarkably unlikable protagonists. Just scene after scene of Dean and John being maladroit and offputting on blind dates.
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This is the scenario both before and after their dad (Lee Majors!) goes into a coma, leaving word that his last wish is to see his own grandchild (and with this role, the former Bionic Man joins Glenn Close and Faye Dunaway in the pantheon of actors who've played most of one whole movie comatose).
What passes for dramatic arc occurs when they make a deal with a surrogate mother on Craigslist.com.
Janine (SNL's Kristen Wiig) is saddled with an Angry Black Man for a boyfriend (Chi McBride), whose job it is to alternately threaten our boys and throw around black stereotypes. The impending birth "inspires" a series of set pieces -- diaper practice with various "surprises" inside, a sperm bank bit, being arrested for loitering at a playground as "research" -- that get sledgehammered to death each time they manage to attain a mild level of "funny."
(This film is rated 14-A)