This 'Brothers' a bit too heavy

"BROTHERS OF THE HEAD" — ** 1/2 — Harry Treadaway, Luke Treadaway, Tania Emery; rated R (profanity, drugs, vulgarity, sex, partial nudity, violence, brief gore).

The makers of "Brothers of the Head" go out of their way to convince us that the film is real, rather than a somewhat convincing faux documentary.

But what they really should have spent more time on is trying to lighten things up. This music-heavy period piece is so dour that it's a bit of a drag. It's not nearly as much fun watching a "mockumentary" when there's precious little mocking going on.

Still, the strength of some of the performances and the music nearly save the film from itself.

The title "Brothers of the Head" refers to Tom and Barry Howe (Harry and Luke Treadaway), conjoined twins recruited to be a novelty act by an ambitious entrepreneur and would-be music producer (Howard Attfield). However, they have no musical skills to speak of, so he's also recruited a group of veteran studio musicians to help train them and be their backing band. In addition, he's hired a thug (Sean Harris) to keep the rather free-spirited twins in line.

This rather exploitative scheme does reap some benefits when a showcase of their resulting glam-punk music goes over well. But, unfortunately, a pretty journalist (Tania Emery) threatens to come between the twins. Figuratively if not literally.

Co-directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe ("Lost in La Mancha") convincingly develop the look and feel of '70s England, but the tone is all wrong. A sequence, for example, that pokes fun at oddball filmmaker Ken Russell is welcome, but it doesn't really seem to fit in with this otherwise straight-forward and dramatic movie.

However, the relatively new stars do have considerable presence, and the makeup and other effects used to convince us the two are joined is very convincing. The music is also good.

"Brothers of the Head" is rated R for strong sexual language (including profanity and crude sexual talk), some strong drug content (use of cocaine and hallucinogens), simulated sex and other sexual contact, partial female nudity, a brief scene of violence (some brawling), and some brief gore. Running time: 93 minutes.

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E-mail: jeff@desnews.com