Where I Watched It: Apple Plus

Audio Description Provided By: PixelLogic

Narrated By: Laura Post

I’m sure Apple was hoping for Oscar gold with this Ewan McGregorr/Ethan Hawke film, but what they got was just a forgettable film with some ideas that can’t really decide what to do with them. is it a comedy? A drama? A dark comedy? Who knows. you decide.

The aforementioned leads play the titular characters who find out their estranged father has died. One wants to go, but doesn’t have a driver’s license, so he makes his brother go with him. Once they get there, the complicated life of a man they only knew as an asshole tumbles out all around them.

They run into things like the funeral director talking about their father being Jewish (which he wasn’t), the lawyer states it was their fathers wish for his sons to dig his grave, and then they meet the much younger lady he was living with, and their much younger half-brother as a result. Who was this man that ruined their lives?

That’s what they are hoping will fuel this film, and for a while it does. it offers a somewhat quirky look at how little you can know someone after a twenty year absence. But like I said, when it wants to be serious, it’s already being silly, so the balance is completely off.

Add to that Ewan and Ethan both have been better, they have very little chemistry as brothers, and you’re left with a film that takes a humorous look at a funeral. Because that’s never been done before.

Luckily, Laura Post is here to do the narration, but there’s nothing really she can bring or enhance to a film where a solid third of it is spent at a gravesite.

I will forget that I saw this in probably a few years. I won’t remember anything about it. I can already feel my brain trying to free up space for something else.

Final Grade: C