While framed as a film about learning some great lesson about life and happiness, 7 Chinese Brothers never really builds from this assumed groundwork.

| Aug 2, 2023

A very funny, resonant and, most importantly, self-aware film that allows a grade-A performer to show off his deadpan chops.

| Original Score: Recommended | Apr 1, 2017

7 Chinese Brothers has an abundance of half-hearted slacker charm that it is hard to fault.

| Original Score: B- | Feb 23, 2016

"7 Chinese Brothers," modest and unassuming, wins us over too, even though I can't figure out what the R.E.M. song has to do with the movie. Plus, it looks like Byington could only afford 2 Chinese brothers at most.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 15, 2015

It's a small film, with some great performances and one irrefutably cute dog.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 11, 2015

A semi-sitcom that ambles through funny vignettes for an hour and 15 minutes without making any sort of statement.

| Original Score: B- | Sep 9, 2015

The film never allows the audience to truly get to know any of the characters in Larry's world, a world in which their uniform shirts emblazoned with company logos and their first names serve as reminders of their lot in life.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 3, 2015

By widening his soulful puppy eyes - matched only, quite eerily, by those of his French bulldog in real life, Arrow - Schwartzman successfully dares audiences to care.

| Sep 3, 2015

Schwartzman ... gives Larry enough humanity and a modicum of personal growth that you keep coming back for more.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 3, 2015

Writer-director Bob Byington showed potential as a social satirist with his provocative 2008 indie RSO (Registered Sex Offender), but this slacker comedy lacks any such venom.

| Sep 3, 2015

With 7 Chinese Brothers, Austin-based filmmaker Bob Byington has made his most accessible film yet.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 3, 2015

The project is more of a sketchy workshop than a fleshed-out feature, but at least Schwartzman's freewheeling banter provides some modest amusement.

| Sep 2, 2015

7 Chinese Brothers is so slight it risks evaporating on contact.

| Original Score: C | Sep 2, 2015

Byington's words elucubrated by Schwartzman's rich varieties of mutter and mumble and banter are one of the genuine moviegoing treasures of a not-completely-half-bad year for emphatically idiosyncratic comedy. I laughed. A lot.

| Sep 2, 2015

The sharpest moments cast mundane struggles in a nearly spiritual light.

| Aug 31, 2015

The one bright spot is French bulldog Arrow (Schwartzman's own dog), who snorts and sighs and all but rolls his eyes in annoyance at the lifeless goings-on. We are Arrow; Arrow is us.

| Original Score: 3/10 | Aug 29, 2015

You've seen this movie before in different guises. Byington does seem to have a vision of life, though, which is more than you can say for most comedy directors working at this budget level.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 28, 2015

Schwartzman is great at making Harry both sharply intelligent and not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. You also sense, in some lost look in his eye, a faint realization that life is passing him by.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 27, 2015

Considering how aimless its screenplay, how lost its hero and how unglamorous its setting, Bob Byington's "7 Chinese Brothers" is remarkably appealing.

| Aug 27, 2015

Laughs are plentiful in "7 Chinese Brothers," but it carries gravitas as well, finding a new perspective on the well-worn saga of a man who refuses to grow up.

| Original Score: B+ | Aug 27, 2015