Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best

We start with a pair of bickering second-rate musicians playing a dreary venue with scarcely a handful of people in the audience. Their bickering escalates after their appearance and the partnership is dissolved. The depressed partner has a job he loathes in a real estate office and has to leave to play (dressed as a moose) for a little group of mentally chal- lenged youngsters. One of the boys attacks him with a knife and he hits the kid in the face, so he's fired. He also loses the real estate job.

Enter an enthusiastic misfit who has scheduled a tour for his band that also dissolved. He wants to team up with our depressed fellow, go on the tour, and be a professional musician. Awkward....

We see:

• Ryan O'Nan ("Eat Pray Love") as the hangdog depressive who can only write sad songs because the love of his life dumped him. (O'Nan also wrote the screenplay and directed.)
• Michael Weston ("Justified") is that ebullient oddball. He lives with his grandfather and owns an impressive array of children's musi- cal toys. Grandpa owns a vintage Jetta.
• Arielle Kebbel ("Think Like a Man") is a promoter who offers to manage them despite a lame beginning.
• Andrew McCarthy ("White Collar") is our hero's older brother, an upright family man who doesn't approve of his little brother's bohemian lifestyle.

This had all the trappings of predictability, but then it wasn't.

The energy level of the 2012 Seattle International Film Festival screening audience was waaaay up as we exited the theater...and that's a good thing! (This review was first posted on May 21, 2012.)