The Brothers Solomon

Review in a Hurry:  What happens when marginally talented comedians Will Forte and Will Arnett unabashedly try to capitalize on Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin? Crap. That's what happens.

The Bigger Picture:  Imagine a movie about two socially inept nimrod bachelors in their late thirties. Now, imagine that they're virgins. Okay, now get ready for this: Imagine that they are trying to impregnate an attractive blonde.

Does this sound familiar? Does it feel like you've seen all this before? That's because you have and not too long ago. The Brothers Solomon is a wholly unoriginal attempt to deliver both the giddy gross-out humor of the Farrelly brothers and the witty sentimentality of Judd Apatow. The result: a total miscarriage.

The "plot" centers around boneheaded brothers (Will Forte and Will Arnett) questing to father a child through a surrogate, because—well, never mind the because. It's totally dumb, and they're totally dumb, and that's just hilarious, right? Actually, no. The Ode to the Loveable Idiot movie was perfected long ago by The Jerk and Dumber & Dumber, and sadly, The Brother's Solomon brings no new life, no zest, no creative advances to the genre.

Here, the two idiots spend their childhoods home-schooled by their father, in the Antarctic, yet grow up to be good-natured buffoons equipped with inexplicably short shorts and silly haircuts. On their mission to knock up a woman, they go out with fat chicks, attempt to woo hotties at supermarkets and resort to the seedy world of Craigslist personals. Here they discover (the grossly underused) Kristen Wiig, who's willing to be their surrogate.

Of course, the brothers are fundamentally clueless about women, so prenatal mishaps abound. Great, but the writing is so stale, and the delivery so often fumbled, that jokes consistently flatline. Arnette and Forte are each quirky in their own performances, but their lack of chemistry, coupled with director Bob Odenkirk's uneven pacing, leaves huge lulls where the comedy just languishes.

Put it all together and there's just something off, and off-putting, about every moment. Watching The Brother's Solomon is a lot like watching some douchebag at a bar misquote your favorite movie, while everyone else sips their drinks in awkward silence.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  This is a perfect date movie. If you hate your date.