The Elephant King

The Elephant King" spends so much of its brief running time in either travelogue or debauchery mode that it misses most every opportunity to explore the fraternal relationship at its core. This is unfortunate since the brothers here are such an emotionally wounded odd couple that they seem ripe for dissection. Ripe, that is, if you're Sam Shepard or Wes Anderson and not, apparently, writer-director Seth Grossman in his inauspicious feature debut (the film's curious array of festival circuit prizes notwithstanding).
Perhaps a bit of star power, or at least less generic actors in the leads, might have given these underdeveloped siblings more credence or appeal. But as, respectively, bookish, suicidal dishwasher Oliver and his frenetic, self-destructive older brother Jake, Tate Ellington and Jonno Roberts appear to be playing at their ill-defined parts instead of inhabiting them. Or maybe they were just following direction.
The well-shot film primarily takes place in colorful northern Thailand, where Oliver travels to bring the dissolute, debt-fleeing Jake back to the U.S. at the behest of their hand-wringing mother (a perfunctory Ellen Burstyn). Oliver's instant switch from bespectacled nerd to Thai-stick smoking, love-struck tourist is more embarrassing than convincing, as is the film's reliance on literally elephant-heavy symbolism.
Da The Los Angeles Times, 24 ottobre 2008