It?s hard to say how much can be blamed on the timing of the release of The Do-Deca-Pentathlon and how much on the movie?s self-amused mediocrity, but the latest from brothers Mark and Jay Duplass (who co-wrote and directed) seems to expose the limits of a certain kind of realism by stretching them one man-child too far.
Do-Deca comes on the heels of Jeff, Who Lives at Home, the latter a light, surprisingly affecting story of two brothers at various odds finding common ground. Jeff is the better movie, by a significant margin. Do-Deca is also the lesser movie in a very specific way: If the runoff of several more successful Duplass-driven or otherwise Duplass-oriented projects (including Jeff, Cyrus, and Humpday) had swirled into a single stream and then pooled in an Austin ditch at summer?s height, Do-Deca might be the movie some avid scavenger fished out.
It feels this way despite the fact that Do-Deca was shot back in 2008, before the brothers went Hollywood. Time on the shelf hasn?t improved this story of two middle-aged brothers, Mark (Steve Zissis) and Jeremy (Mark Kelly), and their re-staging of a two-man, 25-event competition they first participated in as teenagers. Schlubby Mark has a pretty wife named Stephanie (Jennifer Lafleur) and a longhaired son (Reid Williams) who?s too cool for most rooms, but especially the ones containing his dad. We meet this trio at the house of Mark?s mother (Julie Vorus), where they are about to celebrate Mark?s birthday. Deadbeat brother Jeremy shows up despite being distinctly uninvited (in the opening scene Mark recalls Jeremy?s delight in traumatizing him with repulsive gags), crashing the family?s 5-K charity run.
From there the brothers reignite their obsessive competition, to Stephanie?s mean-mommy dismay. Initially Mark expresses a burning contempt for his brother,…
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