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A pair of dim-witted twin brothers from a family of thieves attempt one last heist Brothersan offbeat comedy now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Can an excellent cast, including multiple Oscar winners, eight-time nominee Glenn Close and famed actor M. Emmett Walsh in his final role, save what is essentially a brain-dead SNL-esque affair? That’s up to you to decide.

To give you an idea of ​​what kind of movie this is, the best comparisons that come to mind while watching Brothers Are Tim and Eric’s billion dollar moviethe David Spade vehicle Joe DirtyAnd Jack and Jill– the latter not because of the quality of the filmmaking, but because you can easily imagine a version of this film with Adam Sandler in both roles.

Those leading roles are instead filled by Peter Dinklage and Josh Brolin, who happen to be twins, a fact never questioned by any of the film’s characters presented by this pair of very different physical presences. That the film subverts expectations of the kind of comedy that filled the Arnold Schwarzenegger-Danny Devito film Twins is quite funny in itself.

Brothers opens with a flashback that serves as an origin story: Somewhere in the rural Deep South, 12-year-old twins Moke and Jady say goodbye to mother Cath (Jen Landon) for good when she returns home for Thanksgiving with the police chasing her. Mother sets off into the sunset with boyfriend Glenn (Joshua Mikel), while the two brothers, who learn the wrong lessons, start a life of crime in her footsteps.

Thirty years later, Jady (Dinklage) has just served a long prison sentence for theft, while Moke (Brolin) has turned a new leaf with wife Abby (Taylour Paige) and a child on the way. But after sadistic prison guard Farful (Brendan Fraser) blackmails Jady into committing another robbery, the new ex-con manages to implicate his brother.

Somewhere along the way, the brothers’ long-lost mother (now played by Close) comes back into the picture, and the trio works together to find buried treasure. But the trust between them has long since disappeared: Mother had abandoned the boys thirty years earlier, while Jady allowed Moke to take the blame for their previous job, which led to his prison sentence. Will the trio be able to trust each other after all these years?

Maybe, but we’ve invested so little in these characters that it’s hard to generate much interest in their success. Macon Blair’s low-key, low-stakes screenplay feels like it was intended for a very different and perhaps more introspective type of film; what ended up on screen works more on the level of broad comedy, but when Dinklage and Brolin snap at each other, it works well on those terms.

But what really uplifts Brothers Standing above the usual film of this type is the colorful cast of supporting characters, which also includes Walsh as Farful’s father and an uncredited Marisa Tomei as Bethesda, a hippie who formed a relationship with the incarcerated Moke – and shares a house with a large orang- Utan forces himself on Jady in one of the film’s most memorable moments. And Fraser is a real highlight: his blockheaded, frothing-at-the-mouth villain gives the story the kind of explosive energy it really needs.

Brothers is coarse and coarse, and feels caked in dirt both literally and figuratively; this film isn’t afraid to go places few other mainstream comedies would, basking in all the dirt along the way. But there’s also a sense of honesty about these characters and the world they live in: the filmmaking never places itself above these people, as mainstream comedies of this type might do.

The film is treated in an unusual way both in front of and behind the camera: in addition to a cast of award-winning actors who appear to be living in a slum, the film was directed by Max Barbakow, whose time-loop film Palm Springs was a critical darling and commercial success a few years ago. There’s little sign of that level of ingenuity or storytelling ambition Brothersbut instead a special kind of fluffy charm.