The Brothers Solomon

We've long passed the point of real movie stars being produced from the cast of Saturday Night Live. On the heels of Andy Samberg's disastrous debut in Hot Rod comes this brain-dead exercise with Will Forte (who also wrote the script) and Will Arnett (never an SNL regular, but he's married to Amy Poehler, which is close enough) playing the titular boneheaded brothers, a pair of lifelong bachelors raised in the arctic by an eccentric single dad (Lee Majors). The Solomons' offbeat upbringing purportedly accounts for their socially awkward and occasionally inappropriate behavior, while the years of isolation have imbued them with the dubious “gift” of talking one another into the worst possible ideas—including a spectacularly ill-advised plan to present their father with a grandchild via an opportunistic surrogate mom named Janine (Kristen Wiig). Director Bob Odenkirk seems incapable of mining any authentic humor from these ridiculous characters, and writer Forte signally fails to overcome the SNL tradition of crafting overlong sketches with obvious punch lines. The Brothers Solomon would have been lame as a five-minute bit, but stretched to 90-plus minutes, it feels interminable. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary by costars Will Arnett and Will Forte, nine deleted scenes (16 min.), a 16-minute “making-of” featurette (16 min.), “The Fine Art of Creating a Specimen” featurette (3 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a dumb comedy.] (E. Hulse)