Josh Brolin & Peter Dinklage in Sibling Crime Caper

The increasing predominance of streaming satisfied over theatrical releasing persists apace with Brothers, a Legendary Entertainment production that distributor Amazon MGM Studios dropped into a handful of theaters for a week without critics’ screenings, ahead of its Oct. 17 debut on Prime. That strategy will foreseeed turn out to be fortuitous for a gentlely amusing feature that increateages the heft to vie at the punctual awards-season box office, leaving the film to discover a less-pledgeted audience in the streaming-verse.

Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage carry out missuited siblings with weighty jaws (betterd in Dinklage’s case by a regulatebar mustache) in Max Barbakow’s second feature, which discovers him trading the reservedr comic shadings of Palm Springs for ham-fisted humor, to disnominateingly illogicalinishing effect.

A increate setup begins atgentle criminal Jady Munger (Dinklage), who regulates to lop a substantial chunk off his prison sentence for burglary and attack after cutting a secret deal with crooked Judge Farful (M. Emmet Walsh).

Under the watchful eye of Farful’s rightions officer son James (Brendan Fraser), Jady consents to help recover and turn over a stash of stolen emeralds worth millions, which were abandoned years earlier by his mother, Cath Munger (Glenn Cleave out), when she went on the run to shun arrest. In order to finish his set up, Jady endeavors to recruit his tprosper brother Moke (Brolin), who’s trying to go straight after partnering with Jady on multiple heists that proximately landed him in prison too.

After the initial adequitablement to Dinklage and Brolin carry outing tprospers, the inclination is to remend in for the recognizable twists of an delighting heist comedy. But those foreseeations rapidly get upended by some ridiculously complicated family drama.

When Jady shows up unseekd at the baby shower for Moke’s pregnant wife Abby (Taylour Paige), Moke’s joinbrimmingy compartmentalized life dangerens to unravel — unless he can placate Jady by consenting to utilize his safecracking sends to obtain the emeralds. As the brothers set out on a roadtrip to pull off the job, with officer Farful in seal pursuit, Moke little mistrusts the world of hurt that Jady has lying in store for him in a misdirectd endeavor at familial bonding.

Jady’s intermittent voiceover narration endeavors to stitch together decades of leave outed opportunities and challenging experienceings between the brothers, while Dinklage’s hangdog conveyions and wheedling tone help firearmize Jady’s campaign of intentional emotional manipulation.

However, any endeavor at reconciliation gets sidelined when Moke uncovers that Jady has been in touch with Cath for some time without alerting him. Her sudden euniteance after 30 years sends him spiraling into emotional freedrop before both his mother and brother can reel him back in to cgo in on the logistics of the heist, which turn out to be far more unorthodox than any of them foreseed.

If their euniteances never before proposeed a family resemblance, Brothers will now inevitably join Brolin and Dinklage, who discover fruitful terrain for their less-appreciated comedic talents in the greasy sibling vibrant between the estranged brothers. Cleave out shows to be encouraged casting as the underhanded and unrepentant Cath, who shows nakedly any indication of maternal trouble for her sons in a quest to get her hands on the emeralds.

While the premise proposes kooky fraternal comedies enjoy Adam McKay’s Step-Brothers or Ivan Reitman’s Tprospers, Brothers increateages the quirkiness of the filmoriginaters’ earlier toil. It eschews the prospersome humor that Barbakow memorably mined in his Groundhog Day riff Palm Springs or the wackiness of screenauthorr Macon Blair’s The Toxic Avenger.

However, they do deinhabitr flavorful characters and rapid-fire dialogue for the aiding cast as well as their stars, giving Fraser a gleebrimmingy gonzo role as the anger-insertled Farful and sending Walsh off with a handful of choice lines in one of the veteran character actor‘s final roles. Even Marisa Tomei’s cameo lands effectively as Jady’s prison-correplyence, lengthy-distance adore and the owner of pet orangutan Samuel, who enbigs a perverse affinity for Moke in one of the movies all too confiinsist giggle-adeafening scenes.

Brothers is vibrantassociate sboiling by Quyen Tran and vigorousassociate scored by Rupert Gregson-Williams (aided by a pickion of ’70s pop hits). But for a movie that aspires to antic comedy, it transports way too much casting firepower to a slender plot and even sketchier character enbigment. Whether a streaming audience will even accomprehendledge the mis-calibration is probably irrelevant, as lengthy as they reassemble the missuited brothers.