Sophie Goodhart’s My Blind Brother might think it is walking a dangerous tightrope. Adam Scott plays the titular blind man, Robbie, and he is a real prick. Robbie spends his days training for marathons and other physical challenges, which he uses as fundraisers for the local charity Out of Sight. That may not sound like the stuff of pricks, but he’s really an insufferable do-gooder, and a moralizer, and maybe even a narcissist. All the while, he glories in the attention-mostly through local news interviews-and puts his brother, Bill, through a personal training hell.
Bill loves his brother, of course, but his life has fallen into a routine of dreary stasis: he manages a copy and printing store and helps his brother train. Which means, despite putting on the air of lazy 30-something who lives at home and sleeps all day, he really spends his days training for marathons and all sort of other physical challenges. Nick Kroll-an example of casting perfection-plays Bill with exasperation and despair. Bill’s life is going nowhere, and it’s all because of his damn blind brother.
Eventually, Bill meets Francie at a bar. Francie, played by Jenny Slate, is mourning the death of her boyfriend, who was hit by bus while they were breaking up. Francie feels responsible, and wants to dedicate her life to helping others. Which she does starting immediately after her one-night stand with Bill. Francie’s new commitment to humanitarian good-deeds means she is paired up with-you’ll never guess-the local blind man! They begin dating, mostly because Francie doesn’t want to hurt the blind fundraising athlete’s feelings. She doesn’t know that Nick is the brother of the man she just slept with, and thus begins a love triangle rom-com.
Goodhart’s setup is a stand-by for the genre: two brothers competing for the love of the same girl. The story is a mainstay of romance because it allows for endless character variegation. That’s what Goodhart is going for, and her film works largely because of the casting. Jennie Slate, Nick Kroll and Adam Scott have a comedic chemistry that makes the love-triangle premise approachable; beyond that, however, they all have just enough alienation and outsider in them to make each part uniquely compelling. Scott wears the bravura of a bullshitter with ease, Slate carries her guilt with snorting awkwardness, and Kroll’s outward schlubbiness masks more than just a soft-side for his brother.
The characters in My Blind Brother carry hard secrets and harbor deep-seeded anger. The revelation of such interior damage pushes Goodhart’s movie to the limits of the story’s capacity. But whenever those moments near, the screenplay makes a smart and calculated turn to bring the film back together. These rescues come from two sources.
The first are the parents of Francie’s now dead ex-boyfriend. These grieving parents are beautifully written characters; they have only a few minutes on-screen, but without them, My Blind Brother might drift endlessly in the murky waters of 30-something singles aimlessly seeking dry ground.
The second is Zoe Kazan, who plays Francie’s roommate. Kazan is hysterical as the onlooker to this very bizarre triangle, and she nearly steals the movie from the leads. Her perspective on the situation stands in for an audience who knows how this kind of rom-com goes-she loves him, but he lover her-but still can enjoy how fucked it is when it unfolds.
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