This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

First time i saw this 10 years ago, i thought it was pretty good. Its been on cable more lately and found myself watching it a couple more times,and its grown on me more. Its funny at times. Also very serious at others. As sorta a non practicing Irish Catholic myself, It brought home allot of situations i can relate to. Its also sorta a NY type comedy, with the language and City backgrounds. Covers allot of relationship topics. I sorta call this a chick flick for guys. None of that stupid comedy/phony romance type movie you often see nowadays. But more real life situation. Little things, like the fight Burns has with his brother over drinking a beer in the morning. Now thats the way it is in real life.

I came from the same area where Ed Burns grew up and I recognized the house and the street plus the church shown in the movie. The Long Island Rail Road station was Gibson. It brought back a lot of good memories. The movie captured much of the essence of the times and the neighborhood. I loved it. The characters seemed to be just like the people living there. I know many of the actors were from the area though I did not know them. His father being a NYPD Sergeant and his Mom working in the JFK Airport were indicative of many of the people living in this area. The Irish factor was also a sign of the area. My father was also Irish and worked as a Policeman in the same town where the film was shot. Great work. I am so appreciative of the movie.

Spoilers herein.I suppose we should all celebrate when anyone is able to pull off a first production that doesn't embarrass.But that is faint praise, and this is pretty thin stuff. I could find no interesting element in it, save the self-reference. It is a first time screenplay about the creation of a firsttime screenplay. If not overly clever, that enfolding is especially natural here, using a subtext of the Church as the rules for plays. As with his screen avatar, Burns breaks the dogmatic rules, but only in ways that follow the popular convention. The result is a miscarriage.

'The Brothers McMullen', written, directed by and starring Edward Burns (on an extremely low-budget), invites us into the cosy relationship between three Irish-American brothers and their own relationships with God and members of the opposite sex. It is a conventional wisdom that a good story needs a beginning, a middle and an end, yet 'The Brothers McMullen' seems to be all middle - and engagingly so. Burns gives us a glimpse into the lives of these three brothers as they struggle to find their way through personal emotional turning points and re-evaluate their belief systems. The film is dominated by perceptive, sensitive and realistic dialogue throughout. The dilemmas of these three brothers are instantly recognisable to anyone in their twenties or thirties, their inner conflicts easy to identify with. This film is beautifully acted, and particularly likeable is Mike McGlone as the youngest brother who desperately tries to hold on to what he believes is his genuine Catholic conviction whilst searching for 'true love'. Burns' script is witty, warm, honest and wonderfully unpretentious. Burns himself turns in a great performance of the ever-maligned man who is 'afraid of commitment', yet somehow manages to remain intensely appealing and prevents his character from appearing to be a cliché. A rare gem among contemporary movies - one which is fuelled by words and not actions. Refreshing.