Brothers

• Cert:
• Cat.no: VSLD 10351
• Running time: 94 minutes
• Year: 2000
• Pressing: 2000
• Region(s): 2, PAL
• Chapters: 9
• Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround)
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: None
• Widescreen: varies
• 16:9-enhanced: No
• Macrovision: No
• Disc Format: DVD 5
• Price: £19.99
• Extras : Scene index, Documentary, Music Promo, Trailer, Director’sCommentary, Picture Gallery

  Director:

  Martin Dunkerton

Producer:

Screenplay:

Music:

Cast:

Matt (“Mystic Matey”): Justin Brett
Julian (“The King”): Daniel Fredenburgh
Anna: Rebecca Cardinale
Chris (“Beercan”): Daren Jacobs

If you’ve been ‘avin it large in Greeceover the summer, then Brothers is probably up your street as the winteris looming just around the corner and you need something to remind youof those hazy, lazy days.

There’s no well-known faces here and the characters all have names likeTarzan, Mystic Matey, The King and Beercan and the filmrevolves around a group of men out to take drugs, get pissed and laid as oftenas possible. Being hardly a rival for the Chippendales you can tell they’renot likely to succeed too often, but at least one of them will find lovewith the sensuous Anna (Rebecca Cardinale), while the rest areleft to flounder with their bodily functions.

When it comes to the picture, I have to ask why we’ve only been given a4:3 transfer, even if it looks open-matte, while the trailer is in 16:9widescreen? Zooming the picture in to fill a widescreen TV appears to poseno problems, but of course you’ll lose resolution, not to mention theoccasional artifacts problems on outlines.The average bitrate is a low and steady 3.98Mb/s.

The sound is plain Dolby Surround and tunes from Fat Boy Slim, Chumbawumba, Blurand Sash!, to name but four, do boom out quite well, but the dialogueisn’t always clear enough and has been presented at a recording level thatmakes you turn it up to hear it, only to do exactly the opposite when anothertune kicks in and the lack of subtitles don’t help either.

You’d usually expect none for a film of this calibre, but we start at thetop with a 21-minute Documentary mixing in clips with chat from thecast and crew, the Music Promo for dance smash “It’s My Turn”by “Mrs. Judge Jules”, Angelic, a two-minute Trailer, a three-minutePicture Gallery with photos faded in and out to the strains of theaforementioned dance tune, while the package is rounded off with afeature-length Director’s Commentary.

The menu features the lad from the cover, sans pubes, against a backdrop ofclubbers and music from the film. However, whoever thought 9 chapters wasenough for a film of this length needs their head read.

So, after you’ve spent 90 minutes or so watching this disc, the odds are thatyou’d rather be out following in their footsteps than sitting through thisrubbish again, which just isn’t particularly funny and even if you don’tmake it as far as Greece, the twenty quid you’ll save by not buying thiswill be better spent getting shit-faced instead.