Genre: Comedy
Source: USA (2012)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Streaming
Grade: A
On our way to see The Silver Linings Playbook, Clementine and I were talking about how our different roles in the family shaped our personalities. She is the oldest child of three, with a sister two years and a brother five years younger than she is. She and her sister were and are close--best friends, even. They had different interests, but they loved being together.She asked me what it was like being the youngest of three brothers (and in this particular conversation my sisters didn't come up). I struggled to find the right words.
I love my brothers completely. In fact, as a child, I think I idolized both of them. Both of my brothers were popular and successful in their high school careers, though in different ways. My oldest brother was (and still is) incredibly smart. School valedictorian, National Merit Scholar, eventually going to to Duke University and Princeton. He was a brain, and his confidence and intelligence amazed me. My middle brother was a football star in junior high, moving on to theater, where directors called him one of the most talented actors they'd worked with. Now granted, this was in a moderately sized town with only one high school, but still. The accolades both of them received made them idols for me as an elementary school kid.
As I grew up, I wanted to somehow prove I was just as good, just as smart, just as talented as they were--that I hadn't been left out of the family talent pool. I pushed myself in school, becoming valedictorian (well, one of 14, since my school didn't weight GPAs, but of a class of over 400, it was still an achievement) and a National Merit Scholar as well. I wasn't particularly interested in sports, but I followed my middle brother into the arts: particularly singing and theater, making the school's elite performance choir my senior year and gaining starring roles in theater productions as a junior and senior. I still love the theater today, and I still get the desire to act.
As we walked into the theater, I tried to explain to Clementine that complex brotherly relationship: love, adoration, respect, idolization, tied up inexorably with competition, a desire to win, to prove myself, to be seen, in some weird way, as the best brother. Now, mind you, I don't really think I am the best brother. I look up to my brothers too much to think I'm the best brother. But somehow, perversely, I still want others to acknowledge how smart, how talented, how great I am particularly when compared to my brothers. I have no false assumptions that my brothers feel the same way; this is all my ridiculous psychology--a younger-brother-inferiority complex I never grew out of because I love them so much.
I think that's why The Do-Deca-Pentathalon appealed to me so strongly. Made by two brothers and about the two brothers, the film takes these feelings I can recognize so wholly but not quite explain and then exaggerates them to an absurd-yet-still-real degree. Two brothers engage in a competition--a re-do of a battle they'd had 22 years before--to determine who the "best brother" is. Twenty-five events, from laser tag to arm wrestling to swimming, force them together to confront their damaged relationship.
My relationships aren't damaged, my brothers and I are still friends, but that rivalry, born of love and antagonism, is something the film nails perfectly. It's a typical Duplass brothers' movie--understated in an indie-film-way, human, and absurd--but the tone made the whole movie shine, and it earns its ending without resorting too much to Hollywood sentimentalism. I want to find brothers I know just to recommend it.
Alternate Film Title: "I Thought Your Son Was a Girl For The First Twenty Minutes"
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