The Brooklyn Brothers Beat The Best Reviews

An offbeat, hipster-inflected road movie that steadfastly refuses to conform to expectation and sense. A to-scale victory of quirky charm and feeling over sagacity.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

O'Nan deciphers in comical yet solemn ways, young characters representing warring sides of himself. While doing battle with joblessness, alienation, working stiff drudgery, and existential redemption through art and the imagination.

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This ode to indie legitimacy proves to be too cartoonish to feel real and not outrageous enough to be memorable ...

Full Review | Original Score: C+

While the movie itself is an uneven, sometimes preachy affair, it's alive with possibilities whenever [Weston's] on screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Initially, this low-budget film writes a lot of checks on the First National Bank of Whimsy, but I was astonished when none of them bounced.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

A likably goofy, lo-fi indie propelled by the syncopations of a cheesy keyboard - and the cheesy dreams of its hapless heroes.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Do we really need another film about underachieving white men with scruffy beards? Ryan O'Nan thinks so.

Full Review | Original Score: .5/4

Inner child? Open road? No, this film is actually about Mr. O'Nan and his wan, scruffy innocence.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

An indie about-tell me if this sounds familiar-a brokenhearted sad sack who travels cross-country with a weirdo and a too-hot-for-these-dorks woman on a road trip of healing and self-actualization.

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Offering little more than flat karaoke versions of Sundance-style hits, this is strictly an amateur-hour affair.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

It's just a shame about the script, which follows such a prescribed track of Alexander Payne-ish road-trippery that nothing really rings true.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

It gets nowhere slowly.

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It may have some flaws but The Brooklyn Brothers Beat The Best is still the kind of underdog movie you want to clasp to your heart. It is an unexpected charmer.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

The comedy is at odds, perhaps even at war, with the gravitational downward pull of bittersweet seriousness, and the sucrose content is pretty high by the end. But it's an entertaining film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

O' Nan needs to retool and get some new material.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

It's sweet in places, but too similar to every other eccentric film about a going-nowhere artist hiding his inner brilliance under passive-aggressive annoyingness.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Good fun, but O'Nan doesn't take this film nearly as far as it could go, leaving the plot and its characters somewhat two-dimensional in their obvious stereotyping.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

[A] highly likeable buddy movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

| Original Score: C