Review of The Brothers Bloom (2008) by Davey M — 13 Feb 2010

Wildly uneven, this is sort of Rian Johnson's serio-comic rendition of "The Prestige" (it's better than that film, but, then again, that doesn't mean too terribly much). It starts off pretty delightfully, with a prologue delivered in verse, but pretty soon it becomes apparent that things are being played for laughs, and it starts to feel like just another would-be-Wes-Anderson movie.

The film, like "The Prestige", has a million twists and turns and shifts in tone, but, unlike that film, in "The Brothers Bloom" they're all actually interesting comments on the nature of storytelling, humanity, et al.

Unfortunately, even if they work thematically, they don't necessarily work dramatically, and almost the entire last half of the film feels like a series unending endings. This is an ambitious film (even though it plays it safe a lot of the time, falling back on easy Quirky Indie Movie cliches and formulas), but not, ultimately, an entirely successful one.

Still, it gets high marks for trying to do so much, and pulling a fair amount of it off.