Tv Icon Lee Majors Was In A Star-studded Comedy That Notoriously Flopped At The Box Office

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Lee Majors will forever be known as the Six Million Dollar Man and the original Fall Guy. But his career stretched far beyond those hit 1970s and '80s series, and Majors worked hard to prove he was more than his best-known roles. When it comes to Bob Odenkirk's 2007 comedy "The Brothers Solomon," however, he'd probably prefer you to focus on his two beloved TV shows.

As far as I'm concerned, Bob Odenkirk can do no wrong simply because he gave us Tim and Eric. But even if we leave that aside, it's hard to deny the man is one of the most influential comedic figures of the last several decades. From writing now legendary "Saturday Night Live" sketches to co-leading the alt-comedy sketch series gold standard, "Mr. Show," with David Cross, Odenkirk has well and truly established himself as a towering figure of modern comedy. How, then, do we reconcile "The Brothers Solomon" with such an esteemed career? Not only did this film lose a heck of a lot of money, it prompted Alan Morrison of Empire to claim that audiences would "need an epidural to endure the excruciating pain" of watching it

In 2007, Odenkirk was two years away from making his debut as Saul Goodman on "Breaking Bad," and had recently been beaten to the role of Michael Scott on "The Office" by Steve Carell. In the interim, he made a couple of movies that didn't fare too well with critics or audiences. 2006's "Let's Go to Prison" starred Dax Shepard, Will Arnett, and Chi McBride and earned a lowly 13% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. In 2007 Odenkirk re-teamed with Arnett and McBride for "The Brothers Solomon." But this time he brought Lee Majors along. Unfortunately, it didn't help.

TriStar Pictures

In 2007, Lee Majors made his debut as Coach Ross on The CW's "The Game," played Grandpa Max in "Ben 10: Race Against Time," and appeared in the music video for Bowling For Soup's song "When We Die." Sure, these weren't exactly Majors' best film and TV projects but it was decent enough work. Then, along came Bob Odenkirk and Will Forte with their weird little comedy.

"The Brothers Solomon" seemed like it might be able to improve upon the critical and commercial performance of "Let's Go to Prison." For one thing, the cast was packed with comedic talent including Forte (who wrote the script), Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, and, of course, Lee Majors in a supporting role. That supporting role did not, however, require much of the Six Million Dollar Man, who found himself playing a man in a coma.

More specifically, Majors plays Ed Solomon, father of John and Dean Solomon (Arnett and Forte, respectively). The titular brothers are not your average siblings, however, as they were raised by Ed at an Arctic research facility, preventing them from developing any sort of normal social skills. After moving back to civilization, John and Dean struggle to find love due to their unfamiliarity with social customs — the movie opens with Dean recounting how he followed his brother's advice to kiss his date's father on the lips, which didn't go the way he expected. When their father suddenly falls into a coma, however, the brothers make it their mission to finally find love and give Ed a grandchild in the hope it will wake him up.

TriStar Pictures

If you're looking for movies like "Step Brothers", then "The Brothers Solomon" might actually work for you. There's also the hint of a Tim and Eric-esque energy to Will Forte and Will Arnett's norm-core attired overly earnest siblings, something that Forte and Bob Odenkirk perhaps carried over from having worked on "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" that same year. What's more, "The Brothers Solomon" has some genuinely funny moments that fans of "Awesome Show"-style humor will almost certainly appreciate. The delightfully dumb opening credit sequence, for instance, is just close-ups of Forte and Arnett making an array of slightly unnerving facial expressions set to The Flaming Lips' "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song."

Sadly, general audiences and critics were, perhaps unsurprisingly, unimpressed. "The Brothers Solomon" became another critical disaster for Odenkirk following "Let's Go to Prison," and this time the film struggled to even make back a tenth of its budget, grossing $1 million worldwide on a $10 million budget. Meanwhile, over on Rotten Tomatoes, the film managed a 17% critic score, with Richard Roeper of Ebert & Roeper evidently becoming "so angry at everybody involved" in the making of the movie. It's hard to imagine Roeper was the target audience for Forte's surrealist comedy. But he was far from the only critic to get upset about "The Brothers Solomon."

Interestingly enough, Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle, characterized it as "a movie that tries so valiantly to resurrect the career of Lee Majors," which is an odd observation considering his character is unconscious for almost the entire film — something Hartlaub acknowledges in the very next sentence. Clearly, the critics didn't get the film, and I'm guessing Majors didn't, either.