Brother Nature

Former SNL cast member Taran Killam portrays Roger, a straight-laced and fastidious Chief of Staff to a Seattle Congressman, who suddenly informs Roger he's retiring. The Congressman offers to endorse Roger if he wants to run, and he enthusiastically accepts.

First though, Roger will take a week off and go with his girlfriend Gwen (Gillian Jacobs) to visit her family at their lakeside cabins, where he intends to propose. I imagine you have already guessed things will not go according to plan.

I'm sure most of us have seen movies where there's always one character that is incredibly frenetic and obnoxious with no respect for other's boundaries, yet the remainder of the family just thinks he's wonderful. Such is the case here with Todd (Bobby Moynihan), possibly Roger's future brother-in-law, who makes Roger's time at the cabin a living hell.

The late Chris Farley often played this type of character, but Farley had such an endearing quality about him that it was usually very funny. Unfortunately, the character of Todd here just became highly annoying, even painful to witness for me, as the film progressed. Despite the customary 180's near the end of the movie, the damage had already been done for me, The one bright spot in the film was the understated humor of Kumail Nanjami, who I thought was quite funny as Riggleman, Roger's top aide.

Overall, I felt this movie provided a few laughs here and there, but the intended humor just didn't work for me.

I liked it better when it was called Black Sheep. SNL writers should feel ashamed.

This film is genuinely funny, but not at all side-aching hilarious. The humor isn't forced down ones throat. There's plenty of laughs to be had and the film seems content to allow the audience to laugh at one thing or another rather than at designated points. I found a great deal of the humor weak and poorly conveyed, but there were certain things which I couldn't help chuckling. This one felt like the regurgitation of Meet The Fockers, from 2004. Lorne Micheals of SNL is the producer, he's a comedy master with a laughter resume spanning decades. Thus, I expected greater production value. It was good to see Keenan Thompson, a favorite of mine since childhood (Nickleodeon's All That). He had a very minor role but was easily recognizable despite the crazy hair-do that they gave him here.

Above expectations I found this a worth viewing movie. In the beginning a bit dull but towards end interesting and funny developments occur. In such an environment they could have added a tiny bit more suspense to it especially with congress in view. But to me overall impression; funnier than some mainstream high budget comedies.

Decent watch, could watch again, and can recommend.

Taran Killam, because of his time on SNL, tends to find his ways into roles he doesn't quite match. He's funny, he's a good actor, but he's not always quite enough of whatever he needs to be, in this case: likeable.

And on the opposite end, he's not enough of a control freak, he's kind of a bland middle ground. And he's supposed to be good enough, in some way, for Gillian Jacobs. The start of this movie literally looks more like a setup for the weekend where she dumps him than when he would propose. Though I guess they're not exclusive.

The Killam solution seems to be add someone who is a more infamous actor for being obnoxious, Bobby Moynihan. While Moynihan is good at what he does, I'm usually not a big fan of it: he's usually a lesser version of Chris Farley leaning on being more stupid than fat and physical.

I would imagine that Bobby's character would make almost anyone insane, but this is a long string of abuse humor rivalling "Duplex", and I would argue at a lesser quality.