Edward Burns’ 1995 The Brothers McMullen, is possibly the last movie from the 1990s that I would’ve expected to have a legacy sequel. Brothers was one of those low-budget, personal projects that were everywhere in the mid-1990s, debuting a Sundance in 1995 and winning the Grand Jury Prize. Burns shot it in his childhood home.
When it arrived in theaters that fall, The Brothers McMullen earned a minor cult following and launched a career for Burns as an actor and director. He made a semi-remake, She’s the One, a year later. Burns has chugged along ever since, making a movie earlier this year called Millers in Marriage, with a cast full of 1990s mainstays like Minnie Driver, Gretchen Mol, and Campbell Scott. Now, 30 years after the original, The Family McMullen, picks up the story a generation later, with a Fathom Events release back in October, before it landed this past weekend on HBO Max.
Even though it consists almost entirely of people in rooms talking, the film has a much higher budget than the first film. In case you don’t remember: The Brothers McMullen followed the relationship tribulations of the three McMullen brothers, played by Burns, Mike McGlone, and Jack Mulcahy. Their father has just died, their mother’s run off with an old lover, and all three sons are having woman troubles: Burns has a new girlfriend to whom he hesitates to commit (Burns’ then-girlfriend Maxine Bahns); McGlone is reluctant to marry one girl and ultimately runs off with another, while Mulcahy is cheating his wife (Connie Britton) with his mistress (Elizabeth McKay).
Burns was 27 when he made the first movie and is 57 now, so it’s not surprising that his attitude towards life and family is different. And that childhood home figures heavily in the plot, even though Burns had to track down its new owners. In the new movie, the biggest change is that nobody is still married to who they were. Burns’ Barry is twice-divorced, with a grown son and daughter; McGlone (the guy from the Geico commercials) has just split with his wife, and Mulcahy’s character is dead, although his widow (Britton) is still around the family as a pseudo-sibling.
The Family McMullen is more of a pure comedy than the first film, although it shares its combination of bed-hopping farce and sentimental appreciation of family. It’s all kicked off when, for various reasons, Barry’s children and brother end up living back with him in his massive Brooklyn brownstone. Burns’ preppy daughter (Halston Sage) is engaged to the only man she’s dated, who suddenly decides he wants 30 days to sow his oats before the engagement becomes official, leading her to a flirtation with a plumber named Sam (Sam Vartholomeos). Meanwhile, his aspiring-actor son (Pico Alexander) meets a woman (Juliana Canfield) whose mother (Tracee Ellis Ross) has a history with Barry. Britton’s widow, meanwhile, gets close with a realtor (Brian D’Arcy James), while McGlone’s Patrick reconnects with his ex.
There’s a lot of lore here, which is hard to follow. But I was invested in the relationships, especially Alexander and Canfield’s appealing young performers. And I’m convinced the blue-collar suitor was named “Sam” as a homage to the pickle man in Crossing Delancey.