The second film by newcomer Rian Johnson, “The Brothers Bloom,” which stars Adrian Brody and Mark Ruffalo as con men on a mission to swindle an eccentric heiress (Rachel Weiss), is being bumped from its January 16th dumping ground release date to the blockbuster purgatory season of May 29th (which is in direct competition with Pixar’s “Up,”). The film at one point anyhow, was a December 19 limited release date, but Summit might have silently shit-canned that date while none of us were paying attention. The official website still says, “coming in December,” but it obviously hasn’t been touched in months.
It seems to be another casualty of studios struggling with overcrowding in the winter marketplace, and is moving to the notorious slow month of May. President of distribution for Summit Entertainment, Richie Fay commented on the rational behind the new release date, “We knew from our early tests and from enthusiastic festival reception that this film needed a home when audiences could discover it. May 29, 2009 is an ideal time to counterprogram the film against summer releases.”
We caught the film at the Toronto International Film Festival and found it whimsically overwrought and wound far too tight (not to mention the fact that it was essentially just a weak cribbing of Wes Anderson’s over-stylized later work). Those that enjoy that suffocating hyper-dioramic world will love it, those like Jeffrey Wells who fond it “impossibly silly and logic-free jape in the vein of… ‘Casino Royale,’ which still reigns as one of the emptiest wank-off movies of the mid to late ’60s,” will not.
“The Brothers Bloom” is Rian Johnson’s second directorial effort, after his critically acclaimed debut film, “Brick.”