THE BROTHERS

THE BROTHERS is an extremely foul-mouthed romantic comedy about four young black male professionals having problems with their sex lives.

Morris Chestnut plays Jackson Smith, a 28-year-old doctor who, like his three friends, Terry, Derrick and Brian, has found it hard to commit to one woman. Against his psychotherapist’s advice, Jackson hops into bed with the next pretty woman he meets, a professional photographer named Denise, played by Gabrielle Union. He begins to think Denise is the woman for him, until he discovers that Denise once dated his father, who has been divorced from Jackson’s mother, Louise.

While Jackson has problems dealing with Denise, his father and his mother, his friend Terry decides to get married, Derrick has sexual differences with his own wife Sheila, and Brian, a lawyer, starts to date white women when a black female judge he broke up with starts taking her anger out on him in court. During the course of the movie, viewers learn that Brian and his half brother both suffer from a lack of affection from their mom, who was abandoned by their fathers. Brian doesn’t think Terry can stick to his commitment and advises Jackson to not get tied down himself.

All’s well that ends well in this sex farce, however. Relationships are resolved, reconciliations occur, and commitment and marriage are upheld.

THE BROTHERS oozes with frank sexuality and a fair amount of soft pornography. In one scene, for instance, scantily clad prostitutes attend Terry’s bachelor party. The women in the story often appear in bed or in sexy nightgowns, underwear and revealing dresses, while the men usually are just bare chested, in pajamas or well-clothed. There’s also an extremely heavy amount of frank sexual talk, plus well over 100 obscenities and profanities, some of them in outtakes during the final credits. A good portion of the frank talk and obscenities occur when Derrick and Sheila argue over Derrick’s crude sexual desires.

The brief moral elements occurring in this movie cannot make up for all this dreadful sleaze. Nor can it absolve the filmmakers for wasting their celluloid on what turns out to be, for the most part, a soft porn party mixed with X-rated stand-up comedy fare. At a time when white filmmakers are making such relatively wholesome popular romantic comedies like RUNAWAY BRIDE, RETURN TO ME and THE WEDDING PLANNER, it’s perplexing why talented black filmmakers and performers have decided to turn out such R-rated comedies like THE BROTHERS and THE ORIGINAL KINGS OF COMEDY.