The Brothers Bloom, a conman comedy by Rian Johnson, is a film eager to be liked, and as such seems fated to have the opposite effect. “Quirky” is too complimentary an adjective for the film’s cloying brand of humor, which seems borrowed, lifted, or flat out filched from sources as various as Jean-Pierre Melville and Frank Oz. Johnson, whose second film this is, seems to relish trying out new ideas, but he tries too hard to curry favor with his audience—the entire movie can be reduced to a formula: adorable stars (Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rinko Kikuchi) wearing cute costumes posing in front of postcard-pretty backdrops. (Shot in Serbia, Romania, and the Czech Republic, Bloom certainly looks attractive.)

Johnson’s debut, Brick, which I admired when it came out, was so outlandishly conceived that it succeeded as a fantasy.

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