BEFORE: Steve Zissis carries over from "Jeff, Who Lives at Home" and so does at least one other regular actor from the Duplass Brothers' films. I'm not joking when I say that this film has been nearly impossible to link to, if not for the connections between the films made by the same directors/producers, who seem to draw from their own little stable of actors, it probably wouldn't have been possible at all. I love to say that everything is connected, but is it really that way? You can see below how many actors in this film have managed to NOT be in any of the other 4,500 movies I've watched - how is that even possible? Nearly everyone who was in this film showed up, put on wardrobe, said their lines and then had the same thought, which apparently was, "Well, now I've been in one movie, I guess that's enough, so what else can I do with my life?" It's very odd.
As a result, I can state with some certainty that this is the LONGEST any film has ever been on my DVR without me watching it - or at least this is the movie that's CURRENTLY been on my DVR the longest, I recorded this one in May of 2019, so it's been sitting there, taking up space for over three years, this was running on cable even before the pandemic started, and so maybe about 1,300 films have been watched since then without me being able to link to it. Really, jeez, that takes some doing. But I'm clearing it off the decks today, thanks to the Duplass bros.
THE PLOT: Two brothers compete in their own private 25-event Olympics.
AFTER: Sure, it would have been great to watch this during an Olympic year, but that just wasn't in the cards - I'm afraid that if I let this chance to watch it slip by, I'll never get another one. (The next Olympics will be in Paris, btw, starting July 26, 2024. Remember how the 2020 Olympics were held in summer 2021 because of the pandemic? And then the next winter Olympics happened just six months later, instead of 2 years later?). Well, it turns out this film really didn't have much of a connection to the Olympics, my bad. It's just a film about two very competitive brothers in their 30's.
There are some things I've noticed over the years JUST because I happened to watch two films back-to-back - like I just noticed after watching two films from Mark and Jay Duplass together that both films are about brothers who are competitive (or combative) and they have a widowed mother - so now I'm wondering if these films are autobiographical in the same way, if they were made at a time when the directors' father had passed away, but not their mother. I just tried to confirm this with a Google search, but let's assume for the moment that I'm correct. Sure, why wouldn't the two brothers make two films focused on brothers who compete with each other for their mother's affection? It makes sense, at least in retrospect. But now I also want to know if the Duplass brothers had these types of physical competitions while growing up, to prove which one was the "better brother".
I kind of wish the movie had focused more on the sports, really. The list of what the 25 sports actually ARE is confoundingly blank, perhaps this signifies that the brothers are making up the challenges as they go along, but damn it, I want to know. Also, the videotape of the previous 25-event competition was conveniently recorded over, so we won't ever know what those sports were, either. Oh, sure, we see the two adult brothers doing the long-jump, and there's arm wrestling, something in the swimming pool, and laser tag of course, but a comprehensive list on that piece of notebook paper, would it have killed to you to show that in the film?
The world of film editing is its own magical, mystical process. Perhaps the directors didn't know which scenes would be usable in the film and which wouldn't because they were dealing with two very, well, let's say "unathletic" actors, with dad bods and pot bellies, who could be sure what they would and wouldn't be able to do, physically speaking, that would look genuine on film? But as a result, because we never see them doing 25 different sports, it really feels like something's missing, and that's a pretty big something to be missing.
What's more important is the dynamic between the two brothers, and how their competitiveness affects the older brother's marriage. I'm assuming Mark, the married one with a kid, is the more responsible older brother, while Jeremy is the single, care-free screw-up brother, I mean, come on, that's just how brothers work, right? But allowing Jeremy back into his life, even for just his birthday weekend, is a total trigger for Mark, he falls right back into the old pattern of being super-competitive and trying to beat his brother at everything, even though he promised his wife he wouldn't get into that psycho-trap again. He can't help it, it's ingrained because of the 18 or 20 years he spent in that pattern. This happened to me this past weekend, just being around my sister while she coordinated my parents' packing and moving, I fell right back into my own trap where I let her tell me what to do and how to do it, and I don't speak up or fight back because, well, it's just easier if I don't.
The title of the film, unfortunately doesn't make much sense, if there are 25 sporting events that take place, that would have a different name, if it were to exist. A pentathlon would have five events, and a decathlon would have 10, since a dodecahedron is a solid with 12 sides then I assume a do-decathlon would be 12 events, and so therefore the name of the event evokes the numbers 12 and 5, so how do you get 25 from that? It only works if you acknowledge that the brothers, who were teens when they named their sporting event, just had no idea how the Greek language worked. So I guess that's enough of an explanation, no NITPICK POINT required here, but still, I'm not entirely satisfied.
Anyway, it's really more about family dysfunction than anything close to real sports, so if that's your cup of tea, by all means, proceed, maybe you'll see a reflection of your own family in here, in addition to a reflection of the Duplass family. Still, part of me wishes the directors had taken the storytelling a bit more seriously, just as we all wish these two brothers would take their own lives a bit more seriously. Just me? Or perhaps since I had such an enormously long wait to watch this film, there was just no way that the film itself could possibly live up to the expectations that the wait generated?
Oh, wait, I do have a NITPICK POINT: Mark sneaks into bed with his wife, after playing ping-pong all night with his brother, and he gets there just before it's time to get up and celebrate his birthday weekend. How is he not exhausted for the rest of that day, if he didn't get any sleep? And how does his wife not notice that he's all sweaty, and he probably stinks, too? He sure didn't have time for a shower before sneaking back into bed.
I'm thinking that maybe not many people have seen this film - it made only $10K in theaters, and it's only got 6 reviews on the IMDB. This aired on cable, I swear it - at least it did in May 2019, but wouldn't you know it, I just deleted the proof.
Also starring Mark Kelly (last seen in "First Man"), Jennifer Lafleur (also carrying over from "Jeff, Who Lives at Home"), Julie Vorus, Noël Wells (last seen in "Dreamland"), Reid Williams, Brendan Robinson, Jordan Stidham, Ricky Dillard, Johanna Igel.
RATING: 5 out of 10 push-ups
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