You won’t have to deal with Rian Johnson‘s The Brothers Bloom (Summit, 1.16.09) for another few months yet, but the essence of its faux-comic attitude is pretty much summed up in the “yellow sports car crashing into the stone wall” bit. It’s in the trailer posted below. If you find it the least bit amusing, then maybe TBB will work for you. If you find it perplexing — a nothing moment times infinity — then you may share my reaction.

One of my complaints about this mostly terrible film — minor but hugely irritating — is that Adrien Brody‘s character’s last name is Bloom, as is his brother Stephen, who’s played by Mark Ruffalo…and yet Brody is repeatedly addressed as “Bloom” and Ruffalo is called “Stephen.” I fell in hate with the movie over this point alone.
Here’s an explanation of sorts from Brody, in an interview transcript sent to me this morning:
Questioner: “So it’s called The Brothers Bloom, and your character’s name is Bloom, so does that make you Bloom Bloom?”
Brody: “We had this discussion. (laughs.) I don’t know. I have no idea. That’s pretty much it. We joked around about what the first name might be, but we all settled on being happy with Bloom. Someone mentioned that it’s the Brothers Bloom, like a verb, which is, actually, a nice observation. So, it is what it is. Ferdinand Bloom — there you go. It just wouldn’t be as cool. Ferdinand just doesn’t flow as much.”
This is how professional filmmakers sort through script issues and figure things out? They shrug their shoulders and say, “I don’t know, doesn’t really add up, but let’s go with it anyway”?
This, I submit, is one possible indication why Adrien Brody’s career hasn’t really gone anywhere since he won his Pianist Oscar. If you don’t bring some level of discerning intelligence to the basics, you’re putting yourself at the whims of morons. If an element in a film is utterly nonsensical, you have to stand up and say “why are we going with this? what good is it doing? how does it elevate or enhance the film?”