Owen Wilson and Ed Helms may not be the first actors you'd cast to play brothers, but when you see just what sort of brothers they are, it all makes perfect sense. The two star together in the new comedy Bastards about a pair of twins searching for their biological father. Don't most people just do this sort of thing on Facebook now? Check out the new trailer now,
Bastards follows Peter and Kyle Reynolds who, on the day of their mother's wedding, discover that everything they thought they knew about their father was made up by mom. As this apparently causes some sort of identity crisis for the grown men, they decide to take a road trip in order to track down their biological father. There are at least two potential options in the running. One is NFL Hall of Fame Terry Bradshaw. The other is a man named Roland Hunt, played by J.K. Simmons as a sort of violent version of J. Jonah Jameson. Katt Williams also appears as a homeless man who appears to go along for an unusually long part of the ride.
The hook to Bastards is the two leads. We've seen both Owen Wilson and Ed Helms in movies like this before. However, we've never seen the two of them together in a film like this. Each appears to be playing their traditional role. Wilson looks to be the slacker brother, while Helms is playing the more stable, upstanding one. His character is apparently a successful proctologist, though he apparently went into the field based on the lie that his father died of colon cancer. In an alternate universe the Ed Helms role is being played by Vince Vaughn yet again, but luckily we live in a world where we get to see something at least a little bit new.
Bastards is written by Justin Malen, a writer who is going to have a fairly big next few months in Hollywood. His first big screen feature, Office Christmas Party will hit in December. Bastards follows that in January, and then the Baywatch remake will hit next summer. Malen is going to go from newcomer to veteran over the course of only a few months.
While Bastards looks like it's a fairly paint-by-numbers comedy, this is a general audience trailer for an R-rated movie, which opens up the possibility that there's a lot that we can't see here. Adult comedies can be very hit or miss and as we don't have any history for the screenwriter, it's difficult to guess whether the jokes will land. There are certainly a couple of veteran comedians performing the material, which is a good sign to start with.
What do you think of Bastards? Is this the next R-rated comedy hit or will it be just another failed attempt to add to the pile? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
