Twenty years ago, a movie like Brothers would open on a blustery Friday in October, make about $15 million in its opening weekend, play for about a month as a modest word-of-mouth success, and eventually land on Blockbuster shelves where high schoolers could secretly rent for a weekend night’s roar with friends.

Much more Farrelly Brothers than Coen Brothers, Brothers is the kind of stupid crime comedy we used to get in bulk, when movie studios realized that people enjoyed watching funny movies in the theater with other people.

The cruel irony and/or sign of the times for Brothers is that it opened with little fanfare on Amazon Prime Video last month and has faded from public consciousness, while yet another film skipped the routine streaming search. May it not be so, not with the perfect Thanksgiving movie ready to set fire to the adult members of your family whom you love but can’t always stomach.

Brothers is gloriously stupid, a film so cartoony and buffoonish that it hides in some pretty relatable themes about how you can’t choose your family, but sometimes it would be nice if they chose you for once.

Comedies like this have always been unfairly portrayed for their lack of sophistication, as if aiming for the low-hanging fruit to make you laugh is some kind of genre crime. Brothers functions perfectly as both a silly farce and an excellent showcase for normally stoic actors to flex their funny bones.

Josh Brolin, Peter Dinklage and Glenn Close aren’t typically the people you see in Happy Madison movies, but they get them in a comedy directed by Palm Springs‘Max Barbakow and written by I don’t feel at home in this world anymore‘s Macon Blair should have been heralded as a grand arrival.

Brolin and Dinklage are irresistible together, as the former plays the dorky father much better than you’d expect and the latter in a refreshingly low-life mode where we don’t normally see him. Marisa Tomei shows up for some crazy scenes, and this is one of the last times we’ll see the late, great M. Emmet Walsh appear in the kind of supporting role in which he always thrived.

Some NSFW language follows.

However, the film is by recent Oscar winner Brendan Fraser. Fraser has always been a genius at finding his place in any comedic setting. He is perfectly capable of playing the smartest and dumbest person in the room, often in the same scene. Here he gives perhaps the most hysterical performance of his career, so wild and free in a way that we haven’t seen Fraser in so long.

Combining the drooling menace of Rugrats‘Big Boy’ Pickles and the foolish tenacity of a yippie puppy who can’t control his bladder, Fraser transforms himself into a Looney Tunes failure forever. Literally all of his scenes are funny, using off-kilter lines and gleefully reckless physical comedy to create a breakthrough performance that is so special.

It’s one of the great recent post-Oscar performances, so free of any ego and so in love with its own idiocy. Fraser again has an incredible amount of fun in a good comedy, a wonderful sign that nature really does heal.

If you want to switch off your brain for a moment and enjoy a studio comedy with good actors and crafty creative minds behind the camera, Brothers is an oasis in the desert. We need more mid-budget silent comedies like this one, comedies that don’t do anything new to make you laugh, but still get the giggles.