The Brothers

by Esther Iverem
SeeingBlack.com Film Critic

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Call it the "Exhale" backlash.

Watching "The Brothers," the highly anticipated beefcake fest, you get the feeling that writer-director Gary Hardwick took all those Terry McMillan dramas too much to heart.

In a script that dances on the surface between comedy, drama and the surreal, Hardwick gives the big payback. Rather than four women wandering a wilderness of no job-hygiene challenged-spineless-or-otherwise-sorry men, Hardwick tells the story of four young, professional Black men in the desert of dizzy dames. While they wander, Jackson (Morris Chestnut), Derrick (D.L. Hughley), Terry (Shemar Moore) and Brian (Bill Bellamy) are also getting it thrown at them.

Despite their flaws—most notably Jackson is commitment phobic and Brian is an unrepentant misogynist—they are all portrayed with some sympathy as average Joes who gather for cliched games of basketball, huddle around bars and perform unremarkably at their jobs. In contrast, the (primarily Black) women in their lives seem to exist in some permanent state of PMS—they tote and shoot guns, have problems in bed, can't hug their sons and, in general, don't have much of a life outside games and drama in relationships.

Maybe this would have worked better as slapstick comedy. Had Hardwick pushed harder, he might have wound up in that wickedly hilarious zone where nothing makes sense because it is not supposed to make sense. As this film stands, it is only mildly amusing. There are some jokes but, after a while, the same lines about oral sex or exclamations about the booty get stale. It is not clear whether the viewer is supposed to take this film seriously or not.

Morris Chestnut co-stars in The Brothers.

When we try to take it seriously, we are confronted with an annoying lack of emotional consistency and truth. Who are these brothers? Chestnut's character, a doctor who is seeing a therapist to cure his dysfunction, is given the fullest treatment. Yet, in the end, we still don't understand his phobias, his anger with his father or his immaturity in relationships.

It is difficult to judge acting when the script offers so little but all four of the main actors do a decent job in their roles. Though we know very little about his character, D. L. Hughley—playing the married man among the bunch (a role he also plays in his stand-up routine and on his television show)—actually comes across as the most genuine. Lewis is great in her Sapphire-esque stint as Jackson's mom. The film's bright light is Gabrielle Union in the role of Denise Johnson, a photographer who becomes romantically involved with Jackson.

Denise and Jackson's mother are allowed, in spurts, to play the traditional role of wise women. But not much other wisdom is allowed here. In place of tender affection, wild passion or even humorous mating ritual, there is anger, pettiness and male backlash. It doesn't quite undermine the little progress cinematic Black romance has made with films like "Love and Basketball" or "Sprung," but it reminds us that the struggle for convincing stories and characters is not easy, and continues.

-- April 9, 2001

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