Woody Harrelson (Woody Harrelson) goes to visit his old buddy Matthew McConaughey (Matthew McConaughey) — and learns that the BFFs could be related.
Streaming on: Apple TV
Episodes viewed: 8 of 8
The opening credits of Brothers are composed of childhood photos of Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, and it’s very hard to tell which is which. (Harrelson is on the left. We think.) The two longtime buddy A-listers discovered years back that McConaughey’s mum knew Harrelson’s dad in their youth, and their potential brotherhood became an urban legend that is the basis for this slight but sweet effort.
Both play heightened versions of themselves: Harrelson is the stoner who arrives with his family, unannounced, in a converted bus for an extended stay at the McConaughey ranch. McConaughey is uptight and driven, given to quoting his own commercials as aphorisms and skating by on gee-shucks charm. Neither is straining a single muscle: only about two inches separates this Woody Harrelson from Cheers’ Woody Boyd, while McConaughey even jokes at one point about his facility with romcoms. They amiably mock themselves without viciousness, just dialling everything up to 11. “I’m from Texas but you’re like a belt buckle come to life!” marvels Harrelson of McConaughey’s philosophising.
It’s mostly just fun to watch the pair’s imagined dynamic play out.
Smartly, rather than go the whole hog and cast their families as themselves — something McConaughey toyed with recently in The Lost Bus — they bring in actors to play their wives and children, presumably ensuring greater family harmony in real life and to generally fun effect on screen. The romance between Harrelson’s daughter and McConaughey’s elder son feels pat, but the young characters offer eye-rolling services at their celebrity dads and amusingly undermine any attempt at grandiosity. Ella Grace Helton, as McConaughey’s youngest, and Oona Yaffe as the younger Harrelson are particularly withering, while Holland Taylor, as Ma Mac, is cheerfully mean and usually drunk. It’s a dynamic that works. Even more devastating dialogue goes to McConaughey’s campaign manager, played by Lisa Gilroy, who steals every scene she’s in.
The running time devoted to Matthew McConaughey’s decision to run for governor of Texas — another internet rumour around the actor — and Harrelson’s quest to figure out the truth of his friend’s parentage rolls along nicely, but attempts to shoehorn in more traditionally sitcom plotlines are hit-and-miss. There’s a kidnapping scene that belongs in a different show, and a failed arrest that feels too slapstick. It’s not nearly as fun as watching Harrelson’s veganism bumping up against McConaughey’s hunting-as-family-bonding lifestyle, or the pair trying to prove to their loved ones that they don’t need to trade on their fame. It’s mostly just fun to watch the pair’s imagined dynamic play out, and to wonder who won their doubles match with the Wilson brothers.
An amiable, gently amusing caper based on a legend and propped up by two wildly overqualified leads. If anything it’s a little overstuffed; this only ever needed to be a hangout show with the likeable stars.
