Dave is a loser who hasn't held any job for very long, though he claims to have helped build houses after Hurricane Katrina. He moves from place to place, and his sensible brother Jim has finally found him in a wigwam on an Indian reservation in South Dakota. Jim had to find Dave because their father ("The Colonel") died. So they go back to Kansas City for the funeral.Dinner with the family is awkward and unpleasant. What the brothers did should never happen on such a solemn occasion. But once they finish with the funeral, the brothers have to claim their inheritance, which includes a cabin on the lake near Branson, Missouri.Can you say road trip? The brothers don't get along all that well. Jim went to college and has a job and a family, and Dave doesn't seem to care about much other than having a good time. And when they finally arrive at the cabin, it's a dump. Should they just tear it down, sell the property and split the money? Although there is a lot of great memorabilia, and a huge sports card collection. Dave's main interest is his Alonzo Mourning rookie card.Before they decide to do anything, the brothers have to meet with The Colonel's business partner Jon Charbineau, who is quite a character and looks like a relic from a 70s action TV series. Well, at least he's not wearing a polyester leisure suit. His clothes actually look normal. It's just his face, hair, and sunglasses. There is money, and there are coupons for Branson attractions. The brothers ... well, Dave ... takes full advantage of the chance to enjoy this tacky tourist mecca. The cabin is too much of a dump so they rent a motel room from another guy who is quite a character. No, I don't know his name. But he pranks the brothers good. It might have worked except no one else is in sight.Dave has a great scene when he tries--in a bathrobe--to eat from a fancy hotel's buffet when he's not even a guest. He manages to break the law enough times that the brothers meet Sheriff Wegman and Deputy Bruce, who play "good cop, bad cop". Both cops play both parts, but Bruce is funnier. And dumber.As the brothers decide to fix up the cabin, they have a number of adventures and meet interesting people. Lauren is a nice normal girl who used to date Jim. Petra is a beautiful and friendly immigrant waitress who might be a hooker. I think Ivan is the man Jim decided to hire to fix up the cabin when the brothers realized they were The Three Stooges ("That's coming out of my half" "That's coming out of your half."). Also, I recognized the voice of Yakov Smirnoff but didn't realize that was really him until the credits.Overall, the brothers show us a good time, sometimes silly, sometimes serious and often funny. They get along better in some scenes than they do in others, and sometimes they want to kill each other. And I was very grateful this was on broadcast TV, because the sound went out so often (along with the speaker's mouth being blurred) it was sometimes hard to follow what was going on, but I really don't think I would want to hear what I missed. I mean I really didn't.You have to stay around for the closing credits. Not just because of all the funny stuff in the credits themselves (I have never seen some of the wacky stuff that was done), but also the great musical performance on the left side of the screen. I hesitate to call it bluegrass not only because I'm not sure you can have drums in bluegrass, but also because Dr. Ralph Stanley once said what he does is old time, not bluegrass. It's actually a nice polished but heavily traditional sound with fiddles and banjo.It's not a bad movie if you can see it cleaned up.

Probably the funniest movie I've seen about sibling rivalry.The comedy is funny and over-the-top, but the naturalistic acting style makes it feel more real than it should.Ultimately, this movie is about characters. Like having a camera spying on a pair of adult brothers in a love/hate relationship that act like children when they are around each other.It's a low-key independent movie, so if you don't need big name actors and lots of computer graphics to keep your attention then it's quite entertaining.If you didn't like this flick than you just don't understand the ins and outs of having a brother.Overall it was hilarious and heartfelt. An indie movie at its best.

I saw this at the Alamo and thought it was the funniest movie of the whole festival, and maybe one of the funniest I've seen in the past few years. The big laughs come from the physical comedy, but there's a lot of subtle humor in the dialog and the characters too that I only started to pick up on towards the middle of the movie. Kind of made me feel like I'd catch more the 2nd time around, but this was the last screening of it at SXSW, so I guess I'll wait 'til it gets released. There were some lulls in the middle and the story arc goes from 0-60 a little too quick at the end, but these are minor complaints that only keep it from being a perfect movie. And most movies are not perfect, especially comedies, and ESPECIALLY extremely funny ones. Like Tommy Boy and Billy Madison aside, there are no perfect comedies in the last 20 years. And this movie felt like Tommy Boy got into a car accident with Sideways. And in a good way. I loved it.

I don't know what the heck Todd Sklar was thinking when he wrote this film. I guess the best way that I can describe it is as a crazy dramatic comedy. While I was watching this film I kept thinking to myself, whose crazy family is this film based on? Hopefully no ones, because there were times that I thought these two brothers were going to kill each other. Dave (Alex Rennie) is the carefree younger brother who is homeless and is used to eating out of trash cans and seems to like his life just the way it is. He is really disgusting and does some outlandish crap (use expletive here). His older brother Jim (James Pumphrey) hunts Dave down because their father has died and they discover that they have inherited a cabin in Branson Missouri. A road trip ensues and the two of them hit the road. It turns out that the cabin is a total wreck and Dave decides that this would be a great brother bonding experience if they fixed up the cabin together instead of hiring someone else to do it. I was thinking that at this point in the film that Jim was the sane one since he has a family and a child; but that is not the case. For some reason (I think that it is guilt), Jim keeps doing whatever the heck his crazy brother Dave wants him to do. I just kept shaking my head. I don't care how much I may have ignored a sibling in the past there is no way that I would do some of the stupid stuff that these two do. At one point Dave swallows a handful of dog pills and I just knew that he would be dead in the next scene, but nope. The deceased father's business partner, Jon (Christopher Meloni) was responsible for handling the legalities for these two idiots. At first I thought that he might be nuts too, but it turns out that he was the smartest one on the screen. I almost didn't recognize Christopher because the wig and disguise he was wearing was so terrible. I guess the budget was not that big in the costume department. Anyway, although I laughed a whole lot in this film after it was over, I was just left blank. Like Emma, I am not sure what the title Awful Nice meant; but it is what it is.