‘Little Brother’ Review: John Cena & Eric André in Netflix Comedy

Netflix loves to trumpet their championing of cinematic auteurs like Martin Scorsese, Jane Campion, Alfonso Cuaron and Greta Gerwig, among many others. But you get the feeling that what they’re really excited about is recycling tried-and-true formulas. And their movies don’t get more formulaic than the new odd couple-style comedy starring John Cena and Eric André. If Little Brother feels familiar while you’re watching it, it’s because this is a film so pre-digested that it’s as if a bird ate Twins, What About Bob? and Planes, Trains and Automobiles and then spit the contents into your mouth. 

Little Brother also attempts to resurrect the R-rated, raunchy comedy genre, a former theatrical staple that, with rare exceptions, has not fared well in recent years. This effort isn’t likely to restore its fortunes, unless you find the idea of John Cena receiving anilingus while leaning his massive upper body out of a car hysterically funny.

And yet that’s one of the highlights of the film written by Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel (The D Train) and directed by Matt Spicer, the latter previously responsible for the far superior Ingrid Goes West. The concept, or should I say high concept, involves the reunion between the uptight Rudd (Cena), a real-estate broker dealing with sibling rivalry issues and newly starring in a reality television series, and the supremely messed-up Marcus (André), whom he briefly mentored as a Big Brother while in high school decades earlier.

When Rudd gets a call from the hospital that his brother was seriously injured in an accident, he assumes they mean Josh (Christopher Meloni, unleashing his comedic side), his rich, much more successful older brother, of whom he’s severely jealous. So he’s shocked to discover that the patient is actually the former “little brother” whom he barely remembers. Rudd wants nothing to do with Marcus, who’s about to be released and has nowhere to go, but his good-hearted wife Dierdre (Michelle Monaghan) insists that they bring him home to recuperate.

“He may have to use a bedpan for a few days, until his bowels solidify,” a nurse helpfully comments, right after removing Marcus’ catheter in full, very gross view.

Cue the inevitable tensions between the mismatched pair, with Rudd desperately trying to become a success with a television show called “NYC Hustlers” while the lovable but inept Marcus messes up his life in oh-so-predictable ways. Told to wait in Rudd’s beloved Porsche while he’s filming a scene, Marcus, desperate to pee, tries to relieve himself through a car window opening with disastrous results. He also engages in a threesome in Rudd’s home office and then has sex outside in the driveway while elderly neighbors look on. (Actually, one of the film’s few funny ideas is that women find Marcus irresistible.)

And in a desperate attempt to match the ribald humor of such moments as Jason Biggs engaging in an amorous act with a pastry in American Pie, Marcus offers a frustrated Dierdre some relationship advice to improve her marriage. Informing her that anilingus “restores factory settings,” he says, “You want to get him out of his head, you gotta get into his ass.”

Long before Rudd unknowingly ingests psychedelic drugs and nearly kills Josh, with Marcus having to perform an emergency tracheotomy, Little Brother has long worn out its welcome.

Cena, who’s proven his solid comic chops, doesn’t manage to make his character’s endless slow burns amusing here, while André does his usual wackadoodle thing that presumably is an acquired taste. There are some funny performers on hand in the margins, including Ego Nwodim (Saturday Night Live) and Caleb Hearon (The Devil Wears Prada 2) as TV production assistants, but they can only do so much.

If you haven’t guessed that by the end of the film Rudd learns to love and appreciate his honorary sibling, then you just haven’t been paying attention. And true to formula, I mean form, the credits feature outtakes illustrating that the actors apparently had a much better time making the movie than you will watching it.