The Brothers Bloom: Film review and trailer
THE Brothers Bloom feels like a breathless, helter-skelter bedtime story that they made up as they went along.
A globetrotting, cocktail of screwball comedy and Swinging Sixties-style caper it has charm but may have been more fun to make than it is to watch.
Bloom (Adrien Brody) and his brother Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) are consummate con artists committed to one last elaborate lark involving lonely New York heiress Penelope (Rachel Weisz).
She is thrilled by the adventure they bring to her dull life and unperturbed by the possibility she is being taken for a ride.
Unfolding in Prague, Greece, St Petersburg, Montenegro and Mexico, The Brothers Bloom is freewheeling nonsense enlivened by Robbie Coltrane appearing as a supposedly larcenous Belgian museum curator and veteran Oscar-winner Maximilian Schell as the one-eyed, Fagin-like mentor Diamond Dog.
The eccentric humour is an acquired taste and the contrived story overstays its welcome.
*Reviewed by Allan Hunter
VERDICT 2/5
(Cert 12A; 114 mins)