Director: Paul Fraser
Talent: Timmy Creed, Paul Courtney, T.J. Griffin, Don Wycherley
Release Date: 17 August 2012
It’s Halloween, 1987 and three brothers are travelling from Cork to Ballybunion on an impromptu roadtrip, seeking a replacement watch for their dying father. This sounds like it could be the premise for a sweetly made, quiet film about the peculiarities of Irish family relationships, but ultimately, My Brothers is let down by its abrasive dependence on contrived nostalgia. For the majority of its running time, the film chugs dejectedly along like the bread van in which the characters travel, the vehicle’s assorted mechanical failures standing in for plot development. Yet near the end of the journey, two events occur which are so bizarre, so out of the film’s established scope, that they completely undermine any sympathy one has for its ambitions. The two younger brothers give charming performances, but screenwriter Will Collins didn’t seem to trust his juvenile actors. Striving for pathos, My Brothers ends up being pathetic.
Words: Catherine O’Sullivan
