The Brothers McMullen (1995)

What a waste of my time!!!

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

I just finished watching this on TV. The story is about several weeks in the lives of three bothers. Circumstances (what they are is unimportant) have caused the two younger bachelor brothers to move in with their older married brother and his family. The script explores the relationships between three loving Irish Catholic American brothers, each with a distinctive personality, and the relationships each has with the women in their lives. It's about real love and romance (not the sappy romantic comedy type), fears of commitment, and the twists and turns these men go through in dealing with that aspect of their lives. Their Catholicism has a lot to do with the story. At one point Patrick says to his Jewish girl friend, "I go to Church every week; you go to Temple only once or twice a year." She replies, "Yes, but your religion is crazy." Although the most religious of the three, Patrick, goes against the Church's teachings in that he uses condoms; but, he worries about going to Hell should he commit other serious sin. Marriage to all of them means a life-long commitment. Their mother's life set the standard for them. She had lived 35 years in a forced, loveless marriage until her husband passed away. That freed her to go to the man she had been in love with when circumstances caused her to marry the boys' father. Abortion was out of the question, as was divorce.Ed Burns is credited with writing and directing the film and he also is very credible as the middle brother. While the entire cast made their characters seem real, the actor who in my mind stood out is Mike McGlone, who plays Patrick, the youngest brother who has a kind of altar boy personality. Perhaps Ed Burns' choice of camera angles gets some of the credit for making his performance particularly memorable, but McGlone brought something special to that part.

First time i saw this 10 years ago, i thought it was pretty good. Its been on cable more lately and found myself watching it a couple more times,and its grown on me more. Its funny at times. Also very serious at others. As sorta a non practicing Irish Catholic myself, It brought home allot of situations i can relate to. Its also sorta a NY type comedy, with the language and City backgrounds. Covers allot of relationship topics. I sorta call this a chick flick for guys. None of that stupid comedy/phony romance type movie you often see nowadays. But more real life situation. Little things, like the fight Burns has with his brother over drinking a beer in the morning. Now thats the way it is in real life.

Edward Burns took Sundance by storm with this wonderful debut film centering on three Irish Catholic brothers from Long Island dealing with love, loss and brotherhood. Burns made the film using a $15,000 loan from his father, casting complete unknowns and shooting on weekends over the course of a year. "The Brothers McMullen" helped independent film become what it is today. Written in the tradition of other no-budget classics "El Mariachi" and "Metropolitan", Burns manages to do something that those films couldn't. While Robert Rodriguez had sharp and witty dialogue, it was the bullets and blood that made "El Mariachi" as exciting as it was. While "Metropolitation" kept you on the edge of your seat for the first half an hour, my interest lagged as the film progressed. "The Brothers McMullen", on the other hand, uses a completely dialogue driven script to excite the audience for the complete duration of the picture. If you're looking for cheap laughs and T&A, you might want to look elsewhere. But if you're looking for a heart warming indie classic, I'd definitely suggest "The Brothers McMullen".

I wound up watching the movie by accident and it turned out to be an experience much like passing road kill: It's so horrid you can't look away.And because it was so awful, I thought it might be fun to read a few reviews of it (reading reviews of bad movies is somewhat cathartic; you watch something awful and then let someone else vent about your wasted time....). What I found here was somewhat unbelievable. Somebody actually thought it had some redeeming features. It doesn't.This film did not just have a surfeit of uninteresting characters who spoke extraordinarily turgid dialogue (one character says to the other "I don't think we should see ONE ANOTHER for awhile...." Nobody, really nobody, ever says ONE ANOTHER except in church.) It was also woodenly acted, nonsensically directed and had a plot so boring I kept switching to Tony Robbins infomercials for excitement. Shoestring budget or not, there's no excuse for inflicting this kind of movie on the paying public. Okay, I didn't actually pay to see it because it was on Bravo, but I paid my cable bill and that should count for something.Bottom line is that this movie isn't funny, isn't sad, isn't thought provoking and isn't interesting. It is annoying.