Wonderful character development!

Sick Product of a Sick System

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I must admit that I had initially expected a bit more from "My Blind Brother", given the synopsis of the movie. So it was a little bit disappointing that the movie didn't fully deliver up to what I had expected it to.The story in "My Blind Brother" is about the rivalry of two brothers; blind Robbie (played by Adam Scott) and Bill (played by Nick Kroll) whom both happen to fall in love with same woman Rose (played by Jenny Slate).While there certainly were some good and funny moments throughout the course of the movie, I just felt that there was something missing from the movie to add that special ingredient to it. And it felt like most of the scenes weren't really fully utilized to the extend of what they could have been.The story told in the movie was adequate, and it had potential to be much more than it actually turned out to be at the hands of director Sophie Goodhart.The acting in "My Blind Brother" was alright, and the two lead actors did a good job in carrying the movie."My Blind Brother" lacked a certain key element of comedy that would have me in laughs. I was merely smiling or chuckling at best at some of the scenes throughout the movie. And that was also a disappointing factor to the movie, because I had expected more comedy from it.All in all, then "My Blind Brother" scores a mediocre five out of ten stars from me, as it didn't really live up to what I had expected, and it didn't really bring anything unique or particularly memorable to the comedy genre.

This film tells the story of a man who spends his life taking care of his over achieving blind brother, who seems to over shadow him in every way possible. "My Blind Brother" is a funny comedy. If you look at it from the point of view of the blind brother, it's a pretty empowering and uplifting story. The blind brother gets unconditional support from the able sighted brother, which is touching. If you look at it from the perspective of the able sighted brother, then things are not as rosy. He has no life, no nothing. He doesn't even get any respect from anyone, or receive credit for anything he has done for the blind brother. I feel rather sorry for the able sighted brother.

If you had any doubts about Jenny Slate, if you ever thought she was a trivial comedian whose only talent lay in wacky faces and nasal impersonations, this film will set them to rest. Although the title presumes a male protagonist and refers to his male sibling, this is a deeply feminine film (written and directed by a woman) and Slate's Rose is her brilliant avatar, full of all of the doubts, the striving successes and blunt failures of modern womanhood. Rose is worried she's a slut, worried she's a bad person, worried she can't follow her heart or her instincts. She works through all of the heaped-up anxiety to do the right thing, stumbling now and then and never really overcoming a condition that still plagues women in our society. Throughout the film, she tells us she can't trust her feelings; in a climactic scene she confronts the fact that she's not really in love with her boyfriend with the line "But who am I to decide?" Slate carries this off, makes us feel the void of being a woman in what is still a man's world, with an Oscar-worthy performance.The film itself is short, engaging, maybe a tiny bit predictable but ultimately leaves you with a smile. I saw it months ago at Tribeca, and I just can't get Slate's performance out of my head.

"I'm a superficial narcissist" "I'm lazy and judgmental."This is how the two romantic leads in "My Blind Brother" introduce themselves to each other, and I fell in love with them both immediately.Then, when they both reveal that they perversely wish they could be invalids so they'd have an excuse to lay in bed all day and watch TV, I fell in love with screenwriter Sophie Goodhart. Add in a blind guy, jaded and bored with his own infirmity, who is smoking weed unabashedly in public, even with the police nearby, who says, "I could shoot up in front of cops and they wouldn't do anything," and I love this movie in full. It manages to be morbidly dark, joyfully funny and unsentimentally touching all at the same time. The storyline itself is genuinely fresh; unlike so many other films at this festival, I can't think of another previous movie to compare it to. Robbie (Adam Scott) is a champion blind athlete and local philanthropic hero doted on by the community (and his parents) and seemingly incapable of wrongdoing. His apparently well-earned egotism is fed by his frequent, televised crusades to rise above his "disability" while also raising money for charity, where after each successful feat, he is surrounded by gushing reporters who never seem to notice that he tells the same, lame joke every time: "You look beautiful today," Robbie the blind guy tells every female member of the press.Robbie's hapless, unassuming brother Bill (Nick Kroll) knows the real Robbie to be arrogant, selfish and rude, but he still guide-dog- faithfully runs every marathon by Robbie's side and never makes a peep when he doesn't receive any accolades, or when even his own parents continually criticize him. One night, Bill escapes the relentless Robbie- worship by hitting up the local bar, where despite his best efforts to present himself as unworthy and unappealing, he gets lucky with an attractive and like-hearted woman named Rose (Jenny Slate). Bill is guilt-ridden because Robbie's blindness was the result of a childhood accident in which he was involved. Rose is a guilt-ridden because immediately after she told her fiancé she wanted to break up with him, he distractedly crossed the street and was hit and killed by a bus.After one pitiful, anti-romantic (yet soul-soaring) night together, Rose flees without leaving her phone number. Nonetheless, Bill thinks his karma might finally be coming around and that he's found his sad-sack love-match. But his fantasy is soon squashed when his brother introduces him to his own new paramour – the very same Rose, who (without knowing he is Bill's brother) has started dating blind Robbie in an attempt to make herself a better person. Now Bill must decide if he will put himself second again or finally stand up to his blind brother.Kudos to writer/director Sophie Goodhart for opting against a "when bad things happen to good people" script and instead going with "when good things happen to bad people." Goodhart's two, guilty, self-loathing characters are amazingly charming and lovable. Robbie makes a wonderfully heroic antagonist, whose capability and determination we slowly come to dislike more and more as the story unfolds. (The fact that actor Adam Scott looks quite a bit like a smugly smiling Tom Cruise doesn't hurt.) And Goodhart's ingenious twist on the conventional love-triangle takes the sentimental weight out of the usual wet blanket that hangs over traditional romantic comedies. This movie is bright and buoyant and makes us laugh at ourselves more than at mere jokes.Goodhart's head-on attacks of our socially-correct attitudes toward both the physically handicapped and noble self-sacrifice are deftly executed dark humor that captures what's funny about resentment, bitterness, and condescension. Her sharp jabs at "those less fortunate" never feel like bullying and never fall into rude buffoonery. Even as the movie escalates into full-blown wackiness, it still maintains its shrewd edge.Another strength to this film are the secondary characters. Rose's prissy, eye-rolling, sarcastically unsympathetic roommate (Zoe Kazan) ends up with the stoner blind guy. Ha! It's just another delightful quirk in this defiant film where apathy and under-achievement are treated as virtues and perfection is the problem to be overcome. Finally: a romantic comedy with mutually flawed lovers, where no sacrifice or self- improvement is necessary for them to win happiness and each other.Just be fair, I will say that there are a few small spots where the script veers into impossible interactions – stupid things that could or would never actually be said. These mini-moments wouldn't stand out so much if all the other moments in the script were not so true and all the other lines were not so witty. I am not usually a great lover of comedies, and the fact that I am calling this film One of the Best of Tribeca 2016 means it is truly something special.