Two Brothers and a Bride is a marginally likable bit of escapism fantasy, that has enough light and breezy charm to succeed in much the same sort of fluffy and forgettable way that Danny Deckchair does. The film starts off showing us the simple agrarian existence of brothers' Jake and Josh (Tim Blake Nelson, David Arquette.) Life is safe and predictable thanks in large part to the Brothers mother. She does all the cooking and housework as well as most of the thinking for the family. And right away it becomes evident that Arquette is by far the more favored of the two. Her sudden death throws the boys for a loop and it isn't long before it becomes painfully clear that they are not capable of doing for themselves even to the point of extinction.

One day Nelson stumbles upon an advertisement for a "romance tour" in St. Petersburg, Russia and before you can say Natasha the boys are in the air on the way to the other side of the Iron Curtain. Our Brothers are on a tight budget and their designs are quite a bit different from the rest of the wife-seekers on the tour. Jake and Josh are only interested in recruiting one woman, one who must cook, clean, run a household and be willing to marry the two Brothers, not so much as a wife, but as their new mother. Their recruit need not concern herself with sex or any of that love nonsense, Nyet, Josh and Jake need a woman who can keep them from perishing for lack of domestic skills.

Two Brothers and a Bride suffers from a glaring lack of plausibility, in many areas of the plot, but it's gentle and unpredictable comic sense, it's political incorrectness and an interesting turn by Tim Blake Nelson keep the film watchable. Still nothing that takes place in St. Petersburg is in the least bit grounded in reality, which limits how good the film could ever be. The fact that the women who show up at these cattle call socials are all 23 years old and look like supermodels stretched even the most easy-going belief-suspender. Similarly, Arquettes abrupt transition from a yokel who gets tongue-tied while talking to his goldfish, to an urbane ladies man, who begins to sex his way through the cream of the communist crop, is a bit hard to swallow.

Perhaps the greatest stretch takes place when a singularly attractive British documentary film maker (Emily Mortimer) who is in town shooting a film about the "romance tour" phenomena, suddenly falls for the homely and backward Jake (Nelson). She is ostensibly drawn to Jake because of his unflinching honest and straight-forward approach to proselytizing. She feels drawn to this odd man because he has no agenda beyond his simple quest for a live-in maid/wife/mother. Mortimer is, however, a treat here and when her interest in Jake goes beyond the benefits he offers her documentary, it gives the film a fun twist, despite how difficult the whole thing is to believe.

Throughout the film there is a sly low-key wit that keeps the wheels from falling off the turnip truck, and thanks to solid performances that manage to sell this cock-eyed premise, Two Brothers and a Bride holds your interest and a little bit of a plot twist toward the end gives it enough of a romantic comedy sensibility to make it a film worth checking out. It makes for a good date movie and not a bad film for the whole family, especially if they're from certain parts of Utah.