My Brothers is a film which labours under the misapprehension that somehow quirky Irishness will always be enough.
Here, it painfully isn’t in a turgid end-of-life road-movie which has three young brothers setting off to find a replacement watch for their dying father.
Noel (Timmy Creed), the oldest of the three, took the watch for safekeeping and is distraught when it is broken beyond repair in a fight. With a broken hand (and therefore unable to change gears), he drags in middle brother 11-year-old Paudie (Paul Courtney) as his co-pilot for their trek to Ballybunion amusement park in a nicked bakery van.
Little Scwally (T J Griffin) – obsessed with Star Wars films he has never seen – is allowed to tag along so he won’t tell on his brothers, and off they go, running into motley oddbods and even a pervert along the way.
There are nice contrasts between the brothers – Noel all earnest, Paudie always ready with a joke and with dreams of playing for Liverpool, and Scwally all sweet and innocent
But this is a road movie which goes nowhere in particular.
Presumably we are supposed to see Noel’s decision to head off at the very moment his dad is about to shuffle off his mortal coil as his refusal to face up to reality, but in truth, they go, they come back again and not a lot happens, except a lot of fey Irishness. Not enough however to fill an entire film.
Phil Hewitt
Rental courtesy of Blockbuster. For details of other new releases, see www.blockbuster.co.uk.
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