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| The Brothers Tenor: played by Matt Damon (left) and Greg Kinnear (Photo by Mark Greenberg) |
Dir. & writ. Peter & Bobby Farrelly; feat. Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Eva Mendes, Wen Yann Shih, Seymour Cassel, Griffin Dunne, Cher, Meryl Streep, Frankie Muniz (PG-13)
Bob and Walt Tenor live a normal life in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The brothers are conjoined twins, but that hasn't stopped them from being well-adjusted and successful. Their Quickee Burger business advertises a burger on your plate faster than you can say hold the onions - or it's free.
Pity we can't keep the filmmaking Farrelly Brothers to the same promise. At one point, a lamebrain asks Matt if they are Siamese Twins. Affronted, Matt replies, "No, we're American." And that's about as funny as it gets.
Brother Kinnear dreams of going to Hollywood to act, and Matt tags along (natch!) to hook up with a longtime Asian Internet pen pal. Once in La-La land, they land an agent, a spot on a Cher TV series, and hit it big. They also quickly come apart at the seams.
Part of the film's problem is that Kinnear and Damon are minor league second bananas. Think of the irreverance that a duo like Jim Carrey and Jack Black could have delivered or an Abbott and Costello or even a Schwarzenegger and DeVito.
Instead we are stuck with the Tenors ultimately separating but shackled to a painfully long and saccharine ending that may do serious damage to diabetics. This Punch-and-Judy show doesn't auger well for future Farrelly projects: a Special Olympics epic now filming in Austin and a Three Stooges biopic in preproduction. •
