LosAngelesTimes
Michael Phillips
The peals of silence destined to greet The Brothers Solomon, the not-funniest comedy of the year so far, are doubly depressing since the film squanders several funny performers. My favorite is Kristen Wiig, the Saturday Night Live regular, who was so good as the undermining E! Network lackey in Knocked Up. Here she's stuck playing third banana to Will Arnett (Arrested Development and, perhaps, one too many voiceovers) and Will Forte, another SNL cast member and Solomon screenwriter.
The Wills play the socially maladroit brothers of the title, cockeyed optimists raised in an arctic science lab by a Grizzly Adams-type dad (Lee Majors). Dad slips into a coma just after expressing the wish for a grandson. The brothers take out an ad on Craigslist and find their $10,000 surrogate mother, played by Wiig.
Nothing is harder to overcome as a performer than a comedy going south.
Director Bob Odenkirk lets every other exchange dribble on, suffocating on its own dead air and diorama staging. Arnett has done well in supporting roles (he was the evil rival skater in Blades of Glory) but he's exhausting here, geeking around with his scarifyingly whitened teeth like a stalker, even though he's meant to be Charming Down Deep.
When Wiig's character decides to keep the baby, you're inevitably thrown into Knocked Up comparisons, which do Solomon no favors. This summer's previous SNL knockoff comedy, Hot Rod, was a comic rocket compared to this mirth-free inertia.
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times