‘Brothers’ Review: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson Get Squandered in an Apple Sitcom That’s Barely Alright, Alright, Alright

For a sense of the decline in creative ambition between Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson‘s collaboration in HBO’s True Detective and Apple TV’s Brothers, one would have to imagine that after making Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Robert Redford and Paul Newman had made a movie that was primarily about how “Robert Redford” and “Paul Newman” loved to hang out and discuss how much fun it was to have made Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The most creatively adventurous thing you can accuse Brothers of doing is taking two huge Hollywood stars and putting them in scripts that would have been deemed insufficiently creatively adventurous for ABC’s TGIF block in the mid-’90s — full of endless perfunctory bickering and bouts of limp farce, topped off with platitudes about “family” and “friendship” and how “incest isn’t incest if you aren’t blood relations.”

Brothers

The Bottom Line Good for a couple of chuckles, little more.

Airdate: Wednesday, Sept. 23 (Apple)
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Natalie Martinez, Brittany Ishibashi, Holland Taylor, Nolan Almeida, Ella Grace Helton, Noah Carganilla, Highdee Kuan, Oona Yaffe
Creators: Matthew McConaughey & Woody Harrelson and David West Read and Lee Eisenberg

Much as the Emmys recently asked the longtime friends to vamp for five or 10 minutes while presenting, in order to salvage an awards show with no particular direction, Brothers asks them to vamp for eight 30-minute episodes, in order to salvage a TV show with no particular direction.

It’s a tribute, then, to the charismatic energy generated by McConaughey and Harrelson’s partnership that no matter how hacky some of its sitcom tropes are, Brothers is generally, if never propulsively, engaging.

The “created by” credit on Brothers goes to McConaughey & Harrelson and David West Read and Lee Eisenberg, which is a circuitous way of saying that Eisenberg (Lessons in Chemistry) replaced Read (The Big Door Prize) late in production. Wherever the tone of the series started or ended, whichever parts were produced under its original concept versus during reconceptions or reshoots, nothing resembling a cohesive voice ever emerges.

The “based on a true rumor” comedy begins with Woody (Harrelson) struggling to deal with the emotional volatility of his household of women — wife Joy (Brittany Ishibashi) and daughters Olive (Highdee Kuan) and Kai (Oona Yaffe) — in the aftermath of Olive’s broken engagement. He announces that what the family needs is a roadtrip in the souped-up bus known at The Mothership.

The destination? An unannounced visit to the McConaughey family — Matthew (McConaughey), wife Valentina (Natalie Martinez), teenage son Wyatt (Nolan Almeida), daughter Clara (Ella Grace Helton), younger son River (Noah Carganilla) and Matthew’s mother Mama Mac (Holland Taylor) — at Matthew’s ranch (not played by his real ranch) outside of Austin, Texas.

Woody’s arrival finds Matthew at a crossroads, as he’s planning a speech for a high school event honoring his late father and contemplating a run for governor, overseen by the politically vicious Gwen (Lisa Gilory, possibly coming from a different show, but definitely stealing every scene in which she appears).

Complication ensues when a late night conversation between Woody and Mama Mac reveals the possibility that Matthew’s deceased dad might not have been his biological father and that Matthew and Woody may be actual brothers in addition to devoted buddies.

Further complications ensue as Wyatt and Kai’s flirtation escalates in ways that are supposed to make viewers feel uncomfortable, but not grossed out.

If you’re not sure if that’s a sturdy enough foundation upon which to build a TV series, Brothers gives no indication that it’s sure either.

Woody and Matthew are playing confirmatory versions of themselves — fictionalized and superficial avatars that, rather than surprise you for a single second, suggest that what you’ve seen is what you get from these two very public figures.

Matthew is prone to meandering, pretentious monologues — his memoir and Lincoln commercials are acknowledged — but he’s a perfectly idealized Texan, in favor of both individual rights and collective empathy. Whether or not it’s true, he’s presented as a heavily present and structure-loving father, dedicated to folksy virtues and traditions.

Woody is prone to meandering and hippy-dippy monologues, as a weed-loving anarchist. While he may be freaked out by the aforementioned household of women, his detached parenting style has yielded a pair of smart, independent-minded women who appear not to have anything resembling lives of their own.

Matthew and Woody bicker, but it’s from a place of love, respect and shared references to their respective bodies of work (though never their shared collaboration on EdTV).

Depending on the episode you’re watching, Brothers is a very meta but largely unstructured comedy in which the interaction between its stars and our awareness of their identities is the source of its periodic laughs, or else a very cliché-driven sitcom about an odd couple of friends, or else an even more meta commentary on cliché-driven sitcoms.

I don’t know why anybody would care about any episodic storyline, given that I legitimately couldn’t tell if A-plots like “Woody and Matthew chaperone a high school dance” or a “Woody and Matthew wear silly latex makeup so that they can debut a musical act in a coffee shop and find out if people like them for their talent” — ones I swear came out of the “too obvious for Hannah Montana” discard pile — are meant to be amusing on their own (they’re not) or a commentary on bad TV plotting. But I’m not sure Brothers finds a recent to care about the big “Are they biological brothers or not?” question, either.

The two performances at the center are broad yet naturalistic, and nobody can dispute that Harrelson and McConaughey are convincingly able to play themselves. But if Gilroy feels like she’s coming in from a different show, most of the rest of the the supporting performances feel like they’re coming in from four or five different shows.

You have Taylor in from the kind of multi-cam that she’s proven to be so terrific at, but she often treats lines that aren’t punchlines like they’re punchlines, with head-scratching results. Martinez and Ishibashi play McConaughey and Harrelson’s real-life spouses like easily exasperated sitcom spouses, half disapproving wet blankets and half the only sane people in their respective families. Kuan and Yaffe, though both extremely likable, are understated, or else somebody forgot to write their characters individual personality traits other than “Woody Harrelson’s daughter.” Matthew’s three kids are just TV archetypes, rarely resembling real people at all.

Somebody like Gilroy or Jeff Kober and Barry Corbin (popping up occasionally as a pair of geriatric gangsters) will come and go in situations knowingly designed to feel contrived. But then the series will do a documentary-style montage of McConaughey meeting real Austin people in real Austin locations.

Sometimes the directors — Trent O’Donnell, Jason Winer and Erin O’Malley — capture a loose, unforced tone, with handheld realism and very pleasant photography of Texas settings. Then there are over-lit, flatly framed scenes that would be at home in a broadcast or basic cable half-hour.

None of it, regardless of style or tone, has anything interesting to say about stardom in general, nor about the specific type of approachable Everyman stardom enjoyed by McConaughey and Harrelson, modern families nor, really, about anything at all. I smiled here and there at Brothers, but I don’t remember experiencing more mirth than the occasional chuckle, and the show leaves nothing to latch onto or dwell on for a second past the conclusion of each installment.

If Adam Sandler’s greatest stroke of genius has been getting movie studios and Netflix to pay for and film his vacations with all of his close friends, one might as well give McConaughey credit for the inverse, getting Apple to pay him to hang out roughly at home with his one best friend. Calling Brothers “Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s Grown-Ups” doesn’t offer much incentive to watch. But it properly sets expectations.