The comedy genre, once ruled supreme for a period in Hollywood, from your Airplane! to your There’s Something About Mary, and made a pretty penny at the box office to boot.

There seems little room in cinemas of late, with the streaming sites picking up the comedic slack, to varying degrees of success, admittedly, with the likes of Happy Gilmore 2 on Netflix, Apple’s Outcome, and Amazon Prime’s Brothers.

Netflix continue the rich comedic brother theme with their latest, starring John Cena and Eric André.

Doing pretty well as a realtor in NYC is Rudd Landy (Cena). Things are going to really take off for him however, when he gets a gig on the popular reality show NYC Hustlers.

Just as he’s about to shoot however, he gets a call, his brother was in a car accident. He and his wife Deirdre (Michelle Monaghan) rush to see him, only to find a stranger in his bed. There is a connection there however, as the guy in the bed is Marcus (André), who was Rudd’s little brother in the Big Brother-Little Brother program he signed up for when he was a young student.

It appears that Marcus took the sentiment ‘little brother for life’ a little too seriously, and had broken out of his psychiatric ward where he is a patient, to spend some quality time with his big bro.

The relationship that Marcus believes he has with Rudd isn’t that accurate however, and his arrival sends Rudd’s world tail-spinning out of control.

It’s been a hot minute since Matt Spicer has directed a film, with the last one being 2017’s Ingrid Goes West. His latest plays out like a homage to classic comedies, with the distinct silly DNA of film siblings the Farrelly brothers. It’s also not a million miles away from Adam McKay’s 2008 Step-Brothers, starring Will Ferrell and Jason C. Reilly.

It’s a film that relies on the chemistry between its two leads, which is its main undoing. Cena has earnt his spot as a comedy lead in recent years, but André’s casting doesn’t feel right. It’s his lottery ticket win of his career, as far as starring film roles are concerned, but you get the impression that he was at the bottom of a long list of actors who turned the gig down. To make the film’s truly dumb premise click, Cena needed a Jim Carey equivalent, or Kevin Hart. And it’s that high bar that André simply doesn’t get anywhere near.

He gives it his best shot though, thanks to a witty, crude and crass script, but the on-screen chemistry between himself and Cena is positively neutral.

Still, with comedies so thin on the ground, Little Brother has a pleasing nostalgic glow about it – yes with knob gags, that makes it an entertaining entry amongst its cinematic family peers.