Movie Review: Three Wiser Men and a Boy

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: The Brenner brothers are still entertaining when together

Cons: Too many storylines mean most are underdeveloped

The Bottom Line:

Brenner brothers back

Second film not quite as good

Still has fun moments

“And Christmas Was Saved!”

After enjoying Three Wise Men and a Baby so much when I watched it last week, I was looking forward to revisiting the characters again in Three Wiser Men and a Boy.  Sadly, like many sequels, it didn’t live up to the original.

While it’s only been two years for us, it’s been five years for the characters.  When we check in on the Brenner brothers, they are facing new challenges.  Luke (Andrew W. Walker) is dealing with the added responsibilities and changing relationships that comes with being promoted to captain at his firehouse.  Taylor (Tyler Hynes) is having trouble getting people to buy the game he’s designed himself, leading to being evicted from his apartment.  Stephen (Paul Campbell) is trying to promote his book at overcoming anxiety while he can’t quite propose to his girlfriend, Susie (Fiona Vroom).

But what none of them expect is to find out that their mother, Barbara (Margaret Colin) has been dating a man for the past six months.  When she introduces them to Pastor Roy (Christopher Shyer), it doesn’t go well.

Then the three brothers get roped into putting on the school Christmas production for Luke’s stepson, Thomas (Miles Marthaller).  Can they pull it off and deal with everything else they are facing?

This movie has a couple of problems.  The first is that it tries to do too much.  By my count, we’ve got at least five storylines going on here, and you could potentially argue for another couple.  The movie focuses on three of them, including a new romance for Taylor, but even so, the results feel rushed.  While I liked where everyone wound up, I wish we could have seen more of the characters growing together.

The Christmas pageant attempts to be the thing that brings the brothers together.  But there is so little focus on it that we don’t really care.  In the first movie, it was taking care of baby Thomas that brought the brothers today, and we were invested in that.  Here, the play gets so little attention that we don’t care.

Plus, the humor from the first movie is definitely missing.  There were things that were supposed to be funny, but I cringed more than I did the first time around.

And this movie was lacking the Christmas spirit the first one had.  Yes, they tried to work some of that in, but it didn’t feel as natural as it did in the first movie.  And the product placement was rather funny but not in a good way.

So far, I’ve done nothing but complain.  That’s because this is one of those cases where it is easy to spot out what went wrong.  So, what went right?  I do still like the characters.  I wanted to see them grow through these new challenges.  And I wanted to see them enjoy spending time together again.  The scenes with the three brothers together were still fun.

The three leads still have great chemistry together.  The rest of the cast is fine as well, although they don’t carry things as well as the leads.  There is a bit of low budget cheese here, but overall the writing and acting work.

I’m sorry that I didn’t enjoy Three Wiser Men and a Boy better.  If you enjoyed the first, you’ll want to give this one a try.  If you haven’t seen the original yet, I definitely recommend you give it a chance to charm you.