Brother's Justice Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

Brother's Justice Blu-ray Movie Review

The glamorous life.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 12, 2011

Hollywood is a land built on perceptions, on illusion, on an audience’s willing suspension of disbelief coupled with its simultaneous ardent faith in magic and miracles. If you’ve ever spent any time in and around Los Angeles and its environs, the shabby, sordid truth of Hollywood, at least in part, becomes all too obvious. While we’re certainly light years away from the halcyon days of the Golden Era of Hollywood, when Stars were Stars, the actual fall from grace of so many actors relative to their on screen personae can be a little bracing at time. Walk around the streets, shops and restaurants of everywhere from Santa Monica to the vaunted lane of Rodeo Drive itself and if you come into contact with a “celebrity” (already a lesser stellar event than the old-time Star), you suddenly realize that for all its hype, Hollywood and its inhabitants are pretty much like you and me anymore, save perhaps for an inflated price tag. That dialectic between perception and reality has always provided significant grist for the mill in terms of how Hollywood portrays itself, whether that be in melodramas like any of the versions of A Star is Born to more satiric efforts like State and Main or The Player. Dax Shepard, an appealingly affable and pretty “regular” seeming guy, now jumps into the Hollywood satire fray with the fitfully amusing Brother’s Justice, a mockumentary that takes the Art of the Pitch to absurdist extremes. This low key, dryer than the Sahara sort of comedy may not appeal to everyone, but somewhere in its skewering of the mores of Hollywood there’s a cautionary tale for those who take themselves way too seriously, and if the film is rarely laugh out loud hilarious, it’s at the very least genial and good natured, much like its star (small “s,” please).

Brother’s Justice, like its star and would-be action hero, may in fact be a likable and genial presence, but comedically it never truly catches fire. One of the reasons is that it is neither hyperbolic enough nor ultimately satirical enough to catch much traction beyond the occasional smile or giggle. This is the filmic equivalent of a “one hit wonder,” and that one hit is the idea of Dax Shepard reinventing himself as a sort of Caucasian Jet Li or Jackie Chan (probably a better analogy, given Chan’s comic bent in so many of his films). What we get, therefore, is one scene after another (after another) of Dax and his producing-writing buddy Nate Tuck pitching their idea to one incredulous person after another. Yes, it’s fitfully amusing to see Dax’s former Punk’d boss Ashton Kutcher more or less politely refusing to play Dax’s brother in the film, or to see Tom Arnold insisting he should play Dax’s brother in the film despite their age differences, but it adds up to too much of the same gag played over and over again.

Part of the problem with Brother’s Justice is that it is a prime example of exactly what it’s supposedly skewering, namely the hubristic excesses of modern day Hollywood. Let’s face it: Dax Shepard, as appealing and goofily likable as he is, is not exactly a household name. Sure, some will remember him from Punk’d, or Zathura or even his current dramedy gig Parenthood, but at best he’s been a second stringer with no standout breakthrough roles to his credit. While that might have been played for significant laughs in Brother’s Justice, instead we’re actually given ample evidence as to why Shepard may not have had any standout breakthrough roles. While he tends to play the dunderheaded second (or third) lead in a lot of his roles, and he does the same sort of shtick here, there’s little meat on the idiotic bones, as it were, and there simply aren’t enough guffaw worthy punchlines to sustain the conceit of this enterprise. So Brother's Justice becomes in its own way All About Dax, except that there's not very much there for this film to be all about.

This is the sort of mockumentary that needs to put the pedal to the metal and balls to the wall in order to succeed. Merely being likable or affable isn’t enough, and that ultimately is all that Brother’s Justice has going for it. While there are certainly enjoyable bits sprinkled throughout the mockumentary (Tom Arnold’s sequence is rather surprisingly spry, believe it or not), too much of Brother’s Justice just kind of lies there, waiting for some kind of comic spark that unfortunately never fully arrives. The film was evidently largely improvised, and while that gives Brother’s Justice some of its quirk factor, it also reveals a staggering array of frayed seams, as potential jokes and punchlines are never delivered and instead several scenes just kind of meander toward an eventual fadeout.

Brother’s Justice may strike some as the sort of “in joke” movie that plays only to those who took part in its making. That obviously relegates the film to a rather small demographic in terms of potential audience enjoyment. This becomes akin to watching your kid’s own “Super 8,” where you feel compelled to laugh politely at gags that are half-baked or frankly not even half-baked. It’s part of Shepard’s appeal that even those on the “outside” of Brother’s Justice may feel compelled to be polite and at least smile at the silly shenanigans being depicted on screen, but ultimately that’s a testament to the audience’s proclivities, not a reflection on any inherent value of this undercooked mockumentary itself.

Brother's Justice Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Brother's Justice can't quite escape its high-def video ambience, and though the AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1 is fine in and of itself, the entire film is just kind of drab and soft looking. Colors are okay, but rarely vibrant and certainly never offering anything approaching a wow factor. The entire presentation here is smooth and textureless as glass, with diffused lighting and an overall look that just kind of sits there, like the film, only this time in soft focus. Obviously shot on the fly with handheld cameras, a certain amount of slack has to be cut for Brother's Justice, as no doubt there were never any huge ambitions for this film to look splendiferous, and while it's not bad, it's not very good, either.

Brother's Justice Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Dax may want to talk to one of his peeps, because (as discussed below) the main feature here is presented with two lossy options, Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0, while the Deleted Scenes are granted a lossless stereo LPCM 2.0 mix. What's up with that? One way or the other, the 5.1 mix here can only charitably be given any kudos for surround activity, and that's simply because almost all of this film is little dialogue driven scenes between a couple or a few people. Occasionally Dax's gargantuan pickup or motorcycle will roar across the soundfield, or in some of the faux trailers we'll get a stray discrete effect, but you can toggle between the 5.1 and 2.0 options here and not here much difference for the most part. There's nothing in the sound mix here that screams for a lossless option, truth be told, but audiophiles will not be pleased that they're not being given that option in any case.

Brother's Justice Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted and Alternate Scenes (HD; 14:02). There's some cute and occasionally funny stuff in here, including more of Tom Arnold's manic antics. The funniest thing here, though perhaps unintentionally humorous for high-def audio aficionados, is that these scenes are offered with a lossless LPCM 2.0 track while the main feature only has lossy Dolby audio options. Now that's comedy.
• Drillin' Deep Movie (HD; 7:31) is a mini-movie along the lines of the couple of faux projects that turn up as trailers in the main feature.
• Theatrical Trailer (HD; 2:12)
• Feature Commentary With Dax Shepard, Nate Tuck and David Palmer. In some ways, this is actually more enjoyable than the feature. The guys are just kind of laid back and joke with each other, and while there's not a lot of incredibly meaningful background information imparted, they're fun to listen to.

Brother's Justice Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is one of those films I really wanted to like—really. But after about twenty minutes in, I realized it was just going to be more of the same, and in fact, that's all that happened for the next hour. Now there's certainly some fitfully amusing stuff here and the basic premise is just as certainly sound. But this needed a more manic (dare I say Tom Arnold-esque) approach to really reach comedy gold, and as it stands, Brother's Justice only rarely makes even feldspar grade. In the commentary, Dax talks about not properly pulling any permits for any of the location Los Angeles shooting, stating, "It's better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission." If we generalize that out to include Brother's Justice, Dax, start begging.