Movie commercials offer us a great service; they not only show us which upcoming movies look good, but also which upcoming movies look like Hitler Turds (turds that waste no energy being anywhere except directly beneath your nose). In honor of this profound art, which I partake in from time to time, I give you TRAILER TRACKS, a weekly examination of upcoming movie commercials: what they say, what they don’t say, and what they say accidentally about the product being sold to you, the excited chump.
This Week’s Entry:
Brothers
(Lion’s Gate; Dir. Jim Sheridan)
Introduction:
Brothers appears to be both a drama and a thriller about the horrors of war. Thanks to the stupid Academy Awards, many filmmakers fail to realize that mixing dramatic messages with trashy thriller tropes adulterates “messages” to the point of being disingenuous. You can have The Deerhunter, and you can have Sleeping With the Enemy, but Sleeping With the Deerhunter is almost always gonna star John Heard and suck ass. Anyway, the film is directed by Jim Sheridan, who I guess is taking a break from his long string of hilarious comedies.
The Set Up:
The first thing we see is a funeral for a soldier, played by Tobey Maguire’s Soul. His widow (Natalie Portman) complains, “I can’t feel it. Shouldn’t I be able to feel it?” which automatically tells me that even when he was alive their marriage had problems due to a small penis.
With Daddy dead, someone’s got to help Mommy with the kids because being a single mother is for lesbians. Enter Jake Gyllenhaal, Hollywoods oddest looking Heart-throb. Gyllenhaal feels he should lend a hand because he’s the soldier’s Brother, and it’s the right thing to do. He also appears to be kind of a fuck up compared to Maguire’s ultra serious responsible dead guy, and maybe he thinks he can be a better person in the eyes of himself if he becomes a better person in the eyes of the women his brother liked to beat-up on and unsatisfy sexually.
The Problem:
Gyllenhaal first grows close with the children, and later, thanks to a joint filled with drugs (Crack, I’m pretty sure), with the Portman. We don’t need to see them making out to know they’ll soon be making out, but the commercial has them making out anyway just in case Gail and Oprah were too busy making out to get the implications.
So now they are in love, and the kids seem to love him too. But then one morning she gets a phone call and HOLY FUCKING SHIT! JESUS CHRIST! YOU GOTTA BE FUCKING KIDDING ME! HE’S NOT DEAD! MOTHERFUCKER! HE LIVED! HE’S NOT FUCKING DEAD AT ALL! fuck.
Looks like the guy they found and buried was actually just D.J. Qualls. Given an honorable discharge, which means his troubling signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are swept under the table so he can look more heroic and less like Travis Bickle, Tobey Maguire’s Soul is back from the dead and looking to score some wife-tang. But has Gyllenhaal changed her so much into a reckless Democrat that she’s now beyond reconciliation with her angry Republican?
The Solution:
I think at this point, the movie will have its big, actiony flashback which will keep the men awake while simultaneously humanizing Tobey Maguire’s Soul a little bit. It won’t matter in the long run because as soon as he finds out about where his brother’s dick has been sleeping lately, it’s all over for everybody.
My prediction for how it goes down: Portman will try to be with him. He’ll beat her up a bit, and she’ll take it because she knows he’s been through a lot. Getting beaten up, like frequent U-Haul contracts, is just one of the many bullet-points in the army wife brochure. But then his anger shifts to the children. Especially this little bitch who keeps rubbing the balloon! Listen, I used to be allowed to have kids in the house, and that shit gets annoying pretty quick! Once he beats them up, Gyllenhaal has to step in because he loves those kids, goddammit.
Gyllanhaal’s step-in really pisses off Tobey Maguire’s Soul and gives him a Taliban flashback, so he puts on a grey sweatshirt and starts beating up their glass kitchen with a golf club. Pretty soon the Kitchen Police show up. Maguire begs them to shoot. They oblige him in the face.
They bury him again only to find out that he was actually D.J. Qualls all along and the person they buried in the first place was Tobey Maguire. Portman really freaks out because she not only re-loses her husband, but realizes that she had weird angry sex with D.J. Qualls. On top of that, Gyllenhaal’s got her all hopped up and addicted to Marijuana. Now she has to sell her body to support her drug habit. The end.
Summation:
It’s difficult to believe someone wanted to make a film out of a Jerry Springer episode, yet here it is. The drama pedigree is pretty high though, so maybe it will be more classy than I give it credit for. One actor was in Brokeback Mountain, while the other was in Satan’s Alley so they both have experience with stories about Forbidden Love. I feel a little sorry for Natalie Portman whose role seems limited to crying and kissing, the 1½ K’s of Hollywood sexism (a C is ½ a K, where I come from).
In the end, you just watched the movie, so why pay ten bucks to go see it in a theater full of assholes? This movie commercial just tried to do you a huge favor, don’t let it be in vain. Don’t let it be in vain.