Little Brother Review: John Cena and Eric Andre cannot save this bland attempt at raunchy comedy

Plot: A famous real estate agent’s carefully curated world is upended when his eccentric “little brother” unexpectedly reappears.

Review: Little Brother is the type of comedy that drives me insane. When you get capable actors like John Cena and Eric Andre and put them into roles that handcuff their natural abilities, you are left with a movie that you are supposed to think is funny, but does not make you laugh at all. Both lead actors are charismatic and have stretched themselves in previous projects, but neither plays up their natural abilities in any way that works in this movie, which feels like a poor attempt to capture the unhinged humor of Bill Murray’s What About Bob?. Instead, we are left with a comedy that is heavy on the scatalogical humor and low on originality.

John Cena stars as Rudd Landy, a successful real estate agent who lives in New York City with his wife, Dierdre (Michelle Monaghan), and two teenage sons. Rudd struggles with being in the shadow of his successful older brother, Josh (Christopher Meloni), which has led him to pursue appearing on a reality show for realtors. That is when Marcus (Eric Andre) re-enters his life. Rudd served as a surrogate big brother to the underprivileged Marcus back in high school and fell out of touch over the years. Unbeknownst to Rudd, his assistant, Mia (Sherry Cola), has been emailing Marcus for years, leading Marcus to seek out Rudd to reconnect in person. Marcus’ propensity for getting hurt leads everyone to connect well with Marcus… except for Rudd. The vastly different lives of the two men lead to shenanigans over the next 100 minutes.

I use the term shenanigans loosely, as that word implies whimsy and humor, and there is little of that in Little Brother. Eric Andre’s surreal sense of humor shows up from time to time here, but it pales in comparison to his movie Bad Trip or his cult classic Adult Swim series, The Eric Andre Show. Playing Marcus, Andre gets to pratfall and talk about scatological and sexual things with multiple scenes designed to gross out the audience. I found myself watching all of them without even a smile on my face until a dumb moment in the final scene of the movie. John Cena, who has been funny in Heads of State, Ricky Stanicky, and as the DC Comics character Peacemaker, is relegated to the straight man in Little Brother. Playing a role that echoes Richard Dreyfuss in What About Bob?, Rudd is meant to be relatable, but his motivations feel unrealistic, especially with everyone around him fawning over the clearly deranged Marcus.

Michelle Monaghan does what she can as Rudd’s wife, but it’s clear that between this movie and her turn in the Apple films The Family Plan, the actress is taking whatever roles she is offered. Christopher Meloni has some fun playing the douchy Josh, but his role is another requisite second-tier character in a movie filled with them. It is clear that the filmmakers were banking on Cena and Andre to carry the movie, as everyone else is underwritten. Sherry Cola is good as Rudd’s assistant, but she could have been used a lot more. Ego Nwodin and Caleb Hearon have a couple of scenes that fail to capitalize on their comedic talents, leaving Little Brother focused on jokes about buttholes and Hoobastank.

Written by Jarrad Paul (Movie 43) and Andrew Mogel, Little Brother was directed by Matt Spicer. Spicer helmed the excellent Aubrey Plaza film Ingrid Goes West as well as the series Angelyne and On Becoming a God in Central Florida, but any of his indie cred as a filmmaker disappears with this awful comedy. Little Brother has the feel of a movie that wants badly to emulate classic Farrelly Brothers fare but misses what actually makes audiences laugh. Eric Andre clearly will put himself on the line for a good joke, but even the bloopers that play across the credits fail to get many laughs. Everyone involved clearly knows this movie is stupid, but Little Brother cannot even muster enough stupid fun to make watching it worthwhile.

With a major lack of quality comedy movies hitting the big screen, many have probably been hoping for good ones to debut on streaming. Unfortunately, Little Brother is not worth the time. I have often stipulated that even a dumb movie could be worth just playing as background noise while you could find something to laugh at here or there. Little Brother does not even offer a chuckle for the majority of its running time. The trailer sets this movie up to be far more chaotic than it actually is, with the direction the story actually takes being far blander and more generic than it should be. Little Brother is not funny and wastes an opportunity for the leads to go wild with a silly and over-the-top concept. Instead, this movie is just bad.

Little Brother premieres on June 26th on Netflix.