21 - Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best (2011)

Discovered quite by accident on YouTube, I watched Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best on Amazon Prime. Now I want to help it find the audience it deserves.

The film is a paean to those who consider themselves society's "scraps," the ones who don't quite fit into their nine to five jobs and suburban life. Alex, the main character is infectingly played by Ryan O'Nan (who wrote the screenplay and directed the film). O'Nan looks like the love-child of John Hurt and Ryan Gossling. He can't find the life he wants. He plays music for handicapped school children while wearing a ridiculous pink moose outfit and is totally unable to handle his job of selling real estate. All he really wants is that half hour playing and singing to an audience of five or six.

Alex's girlfriend dumps him, his musical partner does the same and he is accosted by Jack, a quirky musician who plays children's toy instruments and who wants to start a band with him. When Alex agrees, we begin a delightful road picture as Alex and Jack try to find their place in a world that sees them as life's scraps. Michael Weston's Jack is quirky and loveable.

As they go On the Road, they pick up a female groupie named Cassidy (On the Road, think Cassady... get it? If not, you don't deserve Kerouac.) Cassidy looks a lot like Jennifer Lawrence. But the three play off well with each other.

The writing, by O'Nan is powerful. In one scene, as a dejected Alex and optimistic Jim sit in some forsaken country town by a grain elevator, having been deserted, with no money for gas, and no prospects for what’s coming, Jim does a magical riff on their situation that summarizes a philosophy that Jack Kerouac would have understood:

Have you ever thought for a second that this is it? ... Maybe this is all it’s ever going to be. I mean, you sing songs about moths. ... I f**king love moths because they're ugly, ugly little worm creatures that crawl into their cocoons with promises of metamorphosizing into like these beautiful butterflies, but when they come out, they’re still f**king ugly, and now they're blind and they fly into the lights and shit. Those little dudes, they keep on trucking. ... There are no free rides, man, if we can’t handle roughing it a little and carving our way out here like f**king old Apache warriors, then what are we doing? I mean, what the f**k. Cause to me, we’re doing something most people will not do in their entire lives. ... I mean people that sit at the same desk every day for eight to ten hours a day and then they sleep for nine hours a day, and then they truly live their life for maybe, I don't know five hours at the most. I bet those people would love being here. They would f**king love it. Not knowing what’s coming around the corner; not knowing what’s coming next. They’d love it!

By the end of the film, I found the message powerful and the music charming. 

I love quirky Indie films and this brought me a lot of smiles. See it and tell others I sent you to it.

Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best (2011) *****