07/21/2008

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Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as brothers? Really? Actually, we can buy that. They don’t exactly look like they could be related, but they’ve appeared together so many times that it just feels right. Granted, whether “Step Brothers” will go on to be viewed as a cinematic classic remains to be seen, but it’s still managed to give us an excuse to look back at some of our favorite brotherly pairings in some of our favorite films…and, fair enough, they’re not necessarily all classics themselves. The performances, however, are.

Jake and Elwood Blues (“The Blues Brothers”)
Growing up in a Roman Catholic orphanage at the hands of Sister Mary Stigmata (a.k.a. The Penguin) might’ve toughened up Jake and Elwood Blues, but it sure didn’t put them on the right track. When we first meet Jake, he’s just getting out of prison, having done three years for armed robbery, and by the time their cinematic adventure is concluded, he and Elwood are both behind bars again. Somewhere in between, the brothers drive their new Bluesmobile – a 1974 Dodge Monaco, late of the Mount Prospect Police Department – across half the state of Illinois while attempting to raise funds to save their orphanage, a voyage that culminates in a car chase that finds them being followed by policemen, firemen, the National Guard, Jake’s ex-fiancée, and the American Socialist White People's Party (a.k.a. the Illinois Nazis). Jake and Elwood might not always get along with each other, but between the two of them, they were able to put together a blues band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline...well, reportedly, anyway. – Will Harris

Jake: You were outside, I was inside. You were supposed to keep in touch with the band. I kept asking you if we were gonna play again.
Elwood: What was I gonna do? Take away your only hope? Take away the very thing that kept you going in there? I took the liberty of bullshitting you.
Jake: You lied to me.
Elwood: Wasn't lies. It was just...bullshit.

Michael, Sonny and Fredo Corleone (“The Godfather”)
The Brothers Corleone are as distinct as movie siblings get – three very different sides of a loving, yet violent coin. Sonny (James Caan) has his likable qualities, but he’s at heart a street-smart but simple-minded thug whose first thought when facing a problem is: who do I have to intimidate/beat-up/kill to solve it? Fredo (John Cazale) is of a gentler disposition, but he’s lacking not only in street smarts but smarts of any kind. Worse, he’s an emotional weakling who is instantly enthralled by whatever superficially strong personality he happens to be within 10 feet of. Michael (Al Pacino), the classic “good son” is blessed with intelligence and psychological strength -- yet for all his talk of getting out of crime and the importance of family, has no clue how to achieve success without killing the occasional close relative. It’s just business. – Bob Westal

Fredo: Mike! You do not come to Las Vegas and talk to a man like Moe Greene like that!
Michael: Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you. But don't ever take sides with anyone against the Family again. Ever.

The Hanson Brothers (“Slap Shot”)
Hey, when your hometown is going under and you’re the coach of the local hockey team that will also be going under due to economic woes, what do you do? You rally the team for one last series and go out crazy! This can be done easily if you have a trio of nutcase players like the infamous and wondrous Hanson Brothers – Jeff, Steve and Jack! Need some hooking or high sticking done? No problem! Could you use a psycho to skate by and use his stick to smack the heads of all the players waiting in the box? Check! Random insults and fights for no good reason other than the fact that it was merely possible? It’s a done deal! The Hansons effectively created the sort of brain-bashing and hooligan-inciting fisticuffs that we all know and love in hockey today. Unfortunately, the sport now is nothing like it used to be as depicted in this classic film. These three brothers got along through sheer violence and love for the game, not just in blood. And they did it without helmets, people! That’s a true brotherly bond. – Jason Thompson

Reggie Dunlop: What are you guys doing?
Jeff Hanson: Puttin' on the foil!
Steve Hanson: Every game!
Jack Hanson: Yeah, you want some?

Dewey and Nate Cox (“Walk Hard”)
The Cox brothers are a real-life (which is to say, completely fake) rock and roll version of the “Sliding Doors” scenario. Nate Cox is a piano prodigy, but a mishap with a machete at the hands of his brother Dewey -- um, cuts his life tragically short (hey, if it hadn’t been that, it surely would have been the bull, the rattlesnake, or playing chicken with a horse and a tractor). Dewey’s subsequent guilt over his brother’s death makes him a natural bluesman, and thus the death of one musical giant gives birth to another. But what if there had been no machete accident? What would the world of music be like if Nate Cox had become the star? Would he have gravitated towards the devil’s music like his brother, or chosen a more righteous path? We know all too well which choice their father would have preferred, since he was found singing “the wrong kid died” to himself decades later. But personally, we’ll stick with Dewey and his loving tributes to (or is it inspirations for?) Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Brian Wilson and Bob Dylan. Besides that, as his ghost grew up, Nate Cox turned out to be kind of a douche bag. – David Medsker

Ghost Nate: You need to get your shit together.
Dewey: I know, I’ve fallen again.
Ghost Nate: Will you listen to yourself? You keep whining like a little bitch! If I was alive right now, I’d be the fucking President of the United States! I’d be on the moon looking around for aliens to kill!

Bob and Doug McKenzie (“Strange Brew”)
If the McKenzie brothers haven’t yet been officially accepted into the Order of Canada, someone’s clearly just slacking off. In their lone cinematic adventure to date, which was shot in 3B (three beers…and it looks good, eh?), Bob and Doug serve as an ersatz Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in a film that knowingly borrows much of its plot – albeit rather loosely – from “Hamlet.” The brothers McKenzie are notorious for their squabbling, both on their TV show (“The Great White North”), the movie they’re making (“Mutants of 2051 A.D.”), and in the real world, but when it comes to beer, they’re kindred spirits through and through. Unfortunately, Doug’s plan to score free beer by claiming that they found a mouse in a bottle of Elsinore Beer falls flat at the ABC store. But the clerk suggests that they go to the brewery itself, where they find themselves caught up in a plan by the diabolical Brewmeister Smith to put a hypnotic drug into the beer. In the end, Bob and Doug almost drown in beer (a fate which isn’t nearly as close to heaven as you’d think it would be), but they still manage to save the world. Not bad for a couple of hosers. – WH

Bob: What's going to happen if this plan doesn't work, eh?
Doug: The old man will boot us out of the house and we'll have no place to sleep, eh?
Bob: Yeah, I can live in this van, eh? I don't need...
Doug: Take off! You need money to live, or you'll starve!
Bob: Well, this plan sucks. I'm not going in.
Doug: You are, too, or I'll tell the old man you gave away his beer money.
Bob: Okay, okay...

Wyatt and Chet Donnelly (“Weird Science”)
It’s tough being a nerd or a geek or whatever you want to call it these days and also be the younger sibling of a testosterone-fuelled, macho military jackass with a buzzcut. So it is for Wyatt and Chet Donnelly. Wyatt’s good with computers. Chet’s good at belching loudly in Wyatt’s face. Wyatt helped create a hot-ass chick with help from his buddy Gary Wallace and a wannabe Barbie doll. Chet’s good at putting out his cigars in Wyatt and Gary’s food. Wyatt does well cowering from Chet and his psychic abuse. Chet’s not that smart at all and any halfway intelligent person can see that his mental torture of Wyatt isn’t that frightening, but he takes what he can get with his shit-eating grin, donned in wife beaters and fatigues. Chet’s the quintessential moronic big brother who gets his when Kelly LeBrock turns him into what essentially looks like a slimy cigar smoking turd pile. Oh, and the geek gets the real girl in the end. That’s ‘80s justice for you. How little did we know that Chet would be all grown up and truly manly for “Twister” all those years later. It just wasn’t the same. – JT

Chet: What the hell is going on around here?
Wyatt: It was an accident Chet.
Chet: An accident? An accident? Do you realize it's snowing in my room, goddammit?
Wyatt: It's weird, Chet. It's really weird, Chet.
Chet: It doesn't take a genius to figure that out, monkey dick! Start talking, little man!
Wyatt: It's a really long story, Chet. Gary and I were messing around with the computer Friday night. We decided to make a woman, and we did, and she went crazy and she messed up the whole house.
Chet: Don't smart mouth me, you wormy little shit.

Virgil and Turk Malloy (“Ocean’s 11,” “Ocean’s 12,” and “Ocean’s 13”)
No doubt paying homage to Clem Harvey’s role from the original “Ocean’s 11,” Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 remake split his character in two to produce the constantly feuding duo of Mormon brothers, Virgil and Turk Malloy. As the go-to guys for comic relief, the Malloys are nothing short of hilarious when they’re left alone, taking something as straightforward as creating a remote-controlled vehicle and turning it into a pissing competition. Clearly written with real-life brothers in mind (just imagine what Owen and Luke Wilson could have done with the roles), Casey Affleck and Scott Caan have such great onscreen chemistry that you wouldn’t know the difference. Of course, along with playing the class clowns, the Malloys are also the hardest working members of Ocean’s crew, often taking on multiple roles in each heist, and even going the distance on one particular occasion to help a group of Mexican factory workers fight for labor rights. That takes a bond only the greatest sibling rivalry could provide. – Jason Zingale

Turk: Watch it, bud.
Virgil: Who you calling bud, pal?
Turk: Who you calling pal, friend?
Virgil: Who you calling friend, jackass?
Turk: Don't call me a jackass.
Virgil: I just did call you a jackass.

Joey and Jake LaMotta (“Raging Bull”)
The combination of bone-deep affection and nonsensical violence that makes brotherly love such good movie material has rarely been as excessive, yet believable, as in Martin  Scorsese’s famed biopic of hard case boxer Jake LaMotta (Robert DeNiro). Jake can’t even have a conversation about his self-doubts and limitations with much smaller brother, Joey (Joe Pesci), without restoring the power dynamic by bullying him into a physical confrontation. Jake just can’t trust those who love him, and it’s that paranoia that leads to the film’s most devastating moment, when baseless sexual jealously causes him to brutally beat Joey – and knock out his wife, Vicki (Cathy Moriarty), in front of his small children when she tries to stop him. The really terrifying part is that something presumably very much like this really did happen in the real life of the LaMotta family.

Jake LaMotta: I knocked him down. I don't know what else I gotta do. I don't know what I gotta do...
Joey LaMotta: You won and they robbed ya! They're miserable because their mothers take it up the fuckin' ass! That's why.

Elliot and Michael (“E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial”)
Granted, the psychic bond between Elliot and his new best friend, E.T., gives them a connection that transcends mere genetics, but we should never forget the importance of Elliot’s brother, Michael, in this timeless story of a boy and his alien. Although Michael acts the part of the big brother to perfection at the beginning, teasing and taunting Elliot to the point of screaming out one of the greatest genitalia-themed epithets of the ‘80s, the arrival of E.T. changes the dynamic of the siblings in a decidedly dramatic fashion. Suddenly, Elliot is the Dungeon Master (metaphorically speaking, of course), leading the group’s adventures, with Michael serving as more of a conscience, noting when Elliot’s health begins to fail in conjunction with E.T.’s; when it becomes clear that E.T. needs assistance in getting back home, it’s Michael who immediately corrals his friends to lend a hand. Although the final farewell between Elliot and E.T. is one of the saddest moments in all of moviedom, we’re left with the confidence that Michael has grown up just as much as his brother and the suspicion that, if Elliot needs him, he’ll be right there, too. – WH

Michael: Maybe it was an iguana.
Elliot: It was NO iguana.
Michael: You know how they say there are alligators in the sewers? Maybe it was a pervert or a deformed kid or something. Maybe an elf. Or a leprechaun.
Elliot: It was nothing like that, penis-breath!

Richie and Ches Tennenbaum (“The Royal Tennenbaums”)
Of all the brothers on this list, Richie and Chas Tennenbaum (Luke Wilson and Ben Stiller, respectively) probably share the least amount of screen time together. That doesn’t make their relationship any less special, but when you consider the circumstances, it’s not at all surprising that the two rarely speak to one another. After their father Royal (Gene Hackman) discloses to his family that he’s dying, Richie invites him to move back home, while Chas couldn’t care less. He thinks it’s a hoax (and, of course, it is), but that’s just the beginning of the emotional barrier that Chas has surrounded himself with since the death of his wife. He treats Richie’s attempted suicide a little too casually, and even refuses to believe that his brother could ever possibly love him. It’s pretty dark stuff (even more so than Richie’s alleged suicide note), but, like typical Wes Anderson fare, it’s also pretty funny as well. – JZ

Chas: Looks like you and Dad are back together again, huh.
Richie: He's your dad too, Chas.
Chas: No, he's not.
Richie: Yes, he is.
Chas: You really hate me, don't you?
Richie: No. I don't. I love you.
Chas: Well, I don't know what you think you're gonna get out of this, but believe me, whatever it is, it's not worth it.
Richie: Chas. I don't want to hurt you. I know what you and the boys have been through. You're my brother and I love you.
Chas: Stop saying that!

Johnny and Tommy Kelly (“Johnny Dangerously”)
“Brother vs. brother” is a battle that’s been waging ever since Cain decided that he just wasn’t going to take Abel’s shit any more, but rarely has it been funnier than when crime boss Johnny Dangerously – Johnny Kelly to his ma – found himself going up against his District Attorney brother, Tommy Kelly. For years, Johnny had played the dutiful brother, even making sure his brother avoided the temptation of quitting law school in favor of getting laid by giving him a screening of the classic public health film, “Your Testicles and You.” Heck, Johnny even paid for Tommy’s education, albeit with ill-begotten earnings. Unfortunately, these kind gestures came back to bite Johnny in the ass when Tommy discovered that his brother was actually the infamous Johnny Dangerously. Johnny agrees to quit crime for the sake of his family, but between Johnny’s gang thinking he’s turning state’s evidence, and Johnny’s longtime rival, Danny Vermin, framing him for murder, it’s tough for a guy to clean up his act. In the end, though, Johnny beats the rap, saves his brother from being killed by Vermin, and lives happily ever after as a completely above-the-board pet shop owner. (wink, wink.) It’s what Roman Moroni would call a happy farging ending, to be sure…and if you don’t agree, you’re clearly a cork-soaking icehole. – WH

Tommy Kelly: You were gonna take a bullet for me!
Johnny Kelly: Actually, I was just counting on a lot of missing.

Ponyboy, Sodapop and Darry Curtis (“The Outsiders”)
When she was writing “The Outsiders” at the tender age of 15, author S.E. Hinton surely never imagined that her brooding creations would grow up to find new life on the big screen – in a feature film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, no less. And even if Coppola’s 1983 adaptation of Hinton’s 1967 novel didn’t hew as closely to the book as some fans would have liked, the director still managed to capture early ‘80s lightning in a bottle with his cast, which included Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Diane Lane, Leif Garrett(!) and – as Darry, Sodapop, and Ponyboy, the brothers at the center of the story – Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe and C. Thomas Howell. Filled with the kind of melodrama you can only get from a teenage writer, “The Outsiders” is a story best suited to the page, but Swayze, Lowe, and Howell acquit themselves admirably as the Curtis brothers, orphaned when their parents die in a car accident. Without their parents around, Darry is forced to turn down a college scholarship to take care of his brothers; Sodapop drops out of high school to work in a gas station; and Ponyboy…well, he learns what it means to stay gold. – Jeff Giles

Darrel: Listen, with your brains and grades, you could get a scholarship, and we could put you through college, ain't that right, Soda? But you're livin' in a vacuum, Pony, and you're gonna have to cut it out. You just don't stop living because you lose somebody. I thought you knew that. And anytime you don't like the way I'm running things around here, you can just get out, all right?
Ponyboy: You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like me just to get the hell out! Well it's not that easy, is it, Soda?
Sodapop: God damn, you guys! Leave me out of it!

Robert, Charles and Max Crumb (“Crumb”)
Artist Robert Crumb shot to international fame as a celebrated underground comic book artist while his two brothers, Charles and Maxon, languished in obscurity. The case of Charles is particularly noteworthy in that regard, as it was only through his brotherly childhood bullying that Robert got into drawing comics in the first place. Maxon, too, entered into an artistic lifestyle (as a painter in San Francisco), but Charles sadly ended up living an overmedicated, unproductive life with only his mother, a bunch of cats, and stacks of classic novels for company. The documentary traces many areas of Robert’s life, but there’s a particular emphasis on Charles, who seems to embody a sort of “what might have been” spirit. If it all sounds depressing, that’s not quite the case, because the interplay between brothers in often subversively hilarious. “Crumb’s” dissection of brotherly relationships is unlike any other ever seen on film, yet it ends on a particularly bittersweet note: Charles committed suicide shortly after the film was completed. – Ross Ruediger

Robert: You read any recent writers?
Charles: Not really, no.
Robert: Not interested in ‘em?
Charles: Most of them aren’t that good. Most of them aren’t that interesting.

Jamal, Lee Harvey and Shonte Baileygates, Jr. (“Me, Myself & Irene”)
The Baileygates triplets are way too smart to believe that Charlie Baileygates is their father. After all, Charlie is a simple pushover of a Rhode Island police trooper, and his “sons” are geniuses…black geniuses at that. Sure enough, their real father is Shonté Jackson, the black dwarf limo driver with Mensa-level smarts who seduced Charlie’s wife Layla on their wedding day, and every day after that. (Take a look at that third name in the title box again. Ow.) But the triplets love Charlie, and he loves them back, gleefully playing the role of square dad to his hip kids. (When leaving for work, he tells them, “I’m gonna bust a cap.”) Don’t let the boys’ smarts fool you into thinking they’re high-brow, though; they are the mouthiest geniuses you’ve ever heard, turning the art of talking trash into a brand new, multi-lingual sport. If only all smart people were this cool about how smart they are.
– DM

Lee Harvey: He’s so stupid, he thinks calculus is a goddamned emperor!
Shonté Jr.: Yeah, well you think polypeptide’s a motherfuckin’ toothpaste!

Shawn and Lance Brumder (“Orange County”)
The set-up has been done several times before – the younger brother with aspirations for a brighter future and the slacker older brother who stands in his way – but it never gets stale. Of course, that’s about as much character development as you’re bound to find in the Jake Kasdan-directed comedy “Orange County,” and that’s perfectly fine. Plucked out from under his father’s shadow, Colin Hanks’ first major role found him cast alongside a still burgeoning Jack Black in a movie that may have flown pretty low under most people’s radars, but still features one of the more natural brotherly duos of the past decade. Sure, the movie itself doesn’t even begin to compare to most of the films on this list, but that doesn’t mean that Hanks and Black still don’t garner their share of laughs along the way. You’ll have to endure the latter prancing around in a crusty pair of underwear for half of the film, but it’s totally worth it. – JZ

Shaun: Where are Bob's pain pills?
Lance: Here!
Shaun: No, this is Excedrin!
Lance: It's a decoy... I put my stash in bottles... yellow are painkillers, they go in the Excedrin!
Shaun: Listen to me, I need Bob's pain pills!
Lance: Bob doesn't have any pain pills.
Shaun: Yes he does!
Lance: Not anymore, I sold them.

Ricky and Doughboy Baker (“Boyz N the Hood”)
Don't say Eazy-E never did anything for you, film fans: it was his classic gangsta rap track that contributed its title to John Singleton's groundbreaking 1991 film. When it was released, “Boyz N the Hood” earned a lot of attention for its depictions of urban violence and a corrupt Los Angeles police force, but what you might not remember is that, at its heart, the movie tells a deeply moralistic tale, cautioning against everything from gang wars to premarital sex. As brothers from different dads Ricky and Doughboy Baker, Morris Chestnut and Ice Cube move the film’s story forward – and act as the “what if” counterpoint to the strong paternal influence and relatively normal upbringing enjoyed by main character Tré Styles, played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. Ice Cube is particularly effective as ex-con Doughboy, exuding a glowering menace unfortunately absent from his more recent films. Watch this after “Are We There Yet?” and weep. – JG

Ricky: Hey D, why don't you go to the store for me?
Doughboy: Nigga, I ain't the one she told to go get it, it's your wife.
Ricky: Look, man, she ain't my wife.
Doughboy: She may as well be. Y'all got a family and all.

Hank and Jacob Mitchell (“A Simple Plan”)
Just because you’re related to someone doesn’t mean you know them, and that’s by far the least unpleasant truth revealed in Sam Raimi’s dark, snowbound thriller about what happens to two normally law-abiding brothers when they and a friend come across a downed airplane with $4 million inside it. Of the pair, Hank (Bill Paxton) is the educated, polite, “normal” brother, married to Bridget Fonda as a seemingly decent woman who eventually develops a major Lady MacBeth complex. Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) is a socially stunted, rather dim and sad fellow who, in his 30s, still can’t resist the challenge of peeing his name in the snow. But the stress reveals greater truths about who these two brothers really are and who has more to offer the world, but it will take a number of deaths and a terrifying act of sacrifice to reveal it. – BW

Hank: (finding flowers already planted at a gravesite) Somebody else was here.
Jacob: I brought those.
Hank: When?
Jacob: What the hell do you think, Hank? This is the only day we can come here?

Alvin and Lyle Straight (“The Straight Story”)
If we weren’t trying to be at least vaguely democratic with the voting process, we totally would’ve cheated and moved this one farther up the list. Not only is it one of the sweetest examples of brotherly love in Hollywood history, but it has the added advantage of being true. When elderly Iowan Albert Straight learns that his estranged brother Lyle has suffered a debilitating stroke, Albert refuses to let his inability to renew his driver’s license (he’s got bad eyesight, and his legs ain’t doing so well, either) stop him from paying Lyle a visit. With limited options, Albert hops onto his John Deere lawn tractor and hits the road for a 240-mile journey over hill and dale, impressing many folks along the way with his tenacity and determination. When the Straight brothers finally reunite at the end of this story, it serves as a testament to the eternal bond between brothers, resulting in a film that can be watched over and over and still result in the same heartwarming sensation every time. – WH

Lyle Straight: Did you ride that thing all the way out here to see me?
Alvin Straight: I did, Lyle.

Jack and Frank Baker (“The Fabulous Baker Boys”)
Brothers both off-screen and on, Jeff and Beau Bridges could be accused of having an unfair advantage on this list – but as your big brother could have told you when he gave you your 10,000th noogie, nothing about brotherhood is fair. Also unfair? The fact that Jeff and Beau got to show up at work and watch Michelle Pfeiffer slink around in evening gowns – including the very memorable sequence in which she sings “Makin’ Whoopee” while crawling on top of a piano. (As with most Hollywood fantasies, the scene wasn’t as sexy as it looked – it took six hours to film, and was, as you might imagine, somewhat rough on Pfeiffer’s knees.) “The Fabulous Baker Boys” isn't the most scintillating screenplay, and its runaway box office success probably says more about the year it was released than the film itself, but it’s a wonderfully sumptuous throwback to the grand glamour of old-school Hollywood – and none of its stars were ever quite as luminous, before or since. – JG

Frank Baker: Jesus, when was the last time we played the Mallory?
Jack Baker: '78, November.
Frank Baker: Right, it was someone's birthday... Halloran?
Jack Baker: He had a daughter, sweet 16.
Frank Baker: Oh Christ! How could I forget? What a nightmare!
Jack Baker: She asked for it!
Frank Baker: I told Halloran we didn't do vocals, and he said, "What my Sissy wants..."
Jack Baker: "My Sissy gets!" She got it, all right!

Bill and Budd (“Kill Bill: Vol. II”)
Most people have been licking their chops over the possibility of a Vega Brothers movie for years now, but should Quentin Tarantino ever go back and film a prequel to “Kill Bill” about the Deadly Viper Assassin Squad, seeing Bill and Budd together again would be worth the admission alone. As it stands, we really only get about five minutes of the brotherly duo towards the front end of “Volume Two,” but B-movie veterans David Carradine and Michael Madsen make the most of every second. Though we don’t ever learn much about either, it’s evident that they’re very different people. Bill is a leader and Budd is a follower. The former is also still a cold-blooded killer after all these years, while it appears Budd is trying to make up for his past sins. It’s curious, then, that Budd is not only the more sadistic of the pair (he did bury poor Beatrix alive, after all), but he actually comes closer to killing her than his older brother. Imagine that, and with his Hattori Hanzo sword haplessly tucked away in the back of his trailer no less. – JZ

Bill: You hocked a Hattori Hanzo Sword?
Budd: Yep.
Bill: It was priceless.
Budd: Well, not in El Paso, it ain't. In El Paso I got me $250 for it.

Honorable Mentions:

Jesse and Frank James; Cole, Jim and Bob Younger; Ed and Clell Miller; and Charley and Robert Ford (“The Long Riders”)
With so many westerns featuring colorful frontier brother acts, we had to include at least one…but how to choose? We fell back on sheer quantity with this act of brotherly stunt casting on an epic scale in which James and Stacey Keach play outlaws Jesse and Frank James; three Carradines (David, Keith and nerdy Robert) portray the Younger gang; young Randy and Dennis Quaid are the lesser known Miller brothers; and future Spinal Tapster Christopher Guest and sibling Nicholas bring the tale to a violent close as the cowards, Bob and Charley Ford. Brotherly enough for ya’? – BW

Austin Powers and Dr. Evil (the “Austin Powers” films)
If you didn’t know these two were twin brothers, it means you never saw “Goldmember,” which we can’t really hold against you, but, yes, it’s true. Austin and Douglas, a.k.a. Dr. Evil, were separated as babies, and while Austin was raised by the esteemed Nigel Powers, Douglas was raised by…Belgians. This didn’t result in him being able to speak what he calls “freaky-deaky Dutch,” but it did make him diabolically evil, so, okay, fair tradeoff there. Frankly, these two would’ve made the top 20, but after “The Love Guru,” we decided Mike Myers needed to be punished. – WH

Vincent Vega and Vic Vega (“Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction”)
One is a smack-addled, dopey-but-Zen hit man, the other is a ruthless, sadistic psychopath of a jewel thief. While many questions spring to mind when analyzing Vincent “Our man in Amsterdam” Vega and his brother Vic “Mr. Blonde” Vega, what we want to know is: if both sons turned out this bad, what on Earth was their father like? Did dear old Dad stumble upon a young Vic setting fire to bugs with a magnifying glass – and you just know that he did that – and say, “Son, I see a bright future for you in the mutilation business?” Vincent, on the other hand, is your textbook overlooked, path-of-least-resistance slacker gone horribly wrong, one with a brain but no motivation to use it. That both Vegas would die in a hail of bullets is no surprise; what is surprising is that we would actually feel sad about it. Well, for Vincent, anyway. – DM

Bill, Charlie, Percy, Fred, George and Ron Weasley (the “Harry Potter” films)
Ron’s alright, Fred and George are the best practical jokers in all of Hogwarts, and even Percy’s okay for someone once referred to as “the world’s biggest git,” but we couldn’t place these gentlemen any higher than Honorable Mention when we’ve barely seen the two eldest Weasleys on screen. And, yes, we have seen them, if only fleetingly: if you keep your eyes open in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” you can spot a Weasley family photo which does indeed include both Bill and Charlie. – WH

Hans and Simon Gruber (“Die Hard” and “Die Hard with a Vengeance”)
Hans Gruber, the cinematic world’s O.E.G. (Original Effeminate Gangster), was a brilliant bank robber whose life was cut tragically short by a “drunken Irish flatfoot” who saw fit to drop Hans out of Nakatomi Tower. At least, that is the version of the events according to Hans’ brother Simon, who harbored a teensy little grudge against said drunken Irish flatfoot after his brother’s death. Indeed, Simon turned New York City into his own personal minefield and forced his brother’s killer to wear a sandwich board in Harlem that said “I HATE NIGGERS” as retribution. Ah, but the brothers Gruber had a fatal flaw, and that was the sin of pride. Both thought they were the smartest people in the room, and neither could accept the possibility that some loser cop could outsmart them. But outsmart them he did, reuniting the brothers in the afterlife by introducing Simon’s helicopter to live power lines. Yippie-ki-yay, motherfuckers. – DM