Big Picture Big Sound

Just Watch the Brothers

Paul Tanter's "Stealing Chaplin" is an insanely uneven film that would be utterly worthless except for the stellar performances of two real-life brothers in the lead roles, in which they play...brothers.

Actually, the premise is pretty good, too, but everything else lands with the giant thud of being totally unbelievable, featuring cardboard characters in poorly conceived story lines, and acting you might find in a bad porno film. Then again, has there ever been good acting in a bad porno film?

Cal (Simon Phillips) and his brother, Terry (Doug Phillips), are English grifters living in Las Vegas. Their current scam is collecting donations for lepers while dressed as priests. The problem is that they're $30,000 in the hole from gambling debts, and that cash is owed to mobsters. These mobsters are caricatures written and played so poorly that it's tough to be scared of them, yet they're not bad enough to be laughed at.

Cal and Terry, neither of whom could ever be thought of as anywhere near bright, do come up with a plan - if you can call it that - to go to the cemetery where Charlie Chaplin is buried, dig him up, and hold the body for ransom. I'm not sure that anyone would pay the ransom in reality, but whatever. The true oddity is that this plot is based on something that really did happen.

There are two subplots. The first involves Cal flirting with Helen (Bianca Katz), a waitress in a local diner. Some of these scenes are amusing. The other involves a couple of police officers trying to solve the leper scam and then the stealing of Chaplin's body. These scenes fail miserably.

Whenever the Phillips brothers are on-screen it's tremendous fun. Whenever they're not on screen, "Stealing Chaplin" takes a dive over a steep cliff. You're best off renting it and fast-forwarding to whenever you see Cal and Terry.