Sisters & Brothers

The latest effort from prolific Canadian filmmaker Carl Bessai, Sisters & Brothers details the exploits of four sets of siblings – including a movie star (Cory Monteith’s Justin) and his struggling brother (Dustin Milligan’s Rory), a struggling actress (Amanda Crew’s Nikki) and her recovering addict sister (Camille Sullivan’s Maggie), and a sullen teenager (Kacey Rohl’s Sarah) and her newly-discovered Indian half-sister (Leena Manro’s Sita). Filmmaker Bessai has infused Sisters & Brothers with a loose, freewheeling style that immediately sets the viewer on edge, as there’s no getting around the feeling that Bessai is, for the most part, spinning his wheels in an attempt at padding out the running time. The movie’s admittedly watchable vibe is due almost entirely to the efforts of an impressively eclectic cast, though the majority of the actors are trapped within the confines of one-dimensional, needlessly off-kilter characters. Bessai’s pervasively lighthearted sensibilities become more and more problematic as time progresses, with the movie’s complete and utter lack of laughs only highlighting the extraneous quirkiness that’s been hard-wired into the proceedings. There does, as a result, reach a point at which the viewer begins to crave some depth, and it’s disappointing to note that the dramatic moments that begin to crop up towards the end are undercut severely by Bessai’s needlessly stylized directorial choices (eg the effectiveness of an argument by Nikki and Maggie is diminished substantially by the filmmaker’s decision to pump up the wacky score). The inclusion of a few sincere, surprisingly moving moments near the conclusion come too late to make any real difference, and it’s finally impossible to label Sisters & Brothers as a periodically passable yet consistently disappointing piece of work.

** out of ****