Brain Donors (1992)

Like the best Marx Brothers films, Brain Donors has gags for the sake of gags. There's no pretense to plausibility. It's just layers and layers of jokes; some work, some don't. [18 April 1992, p.C3]

A string of slapstick sequences at the end of Brain Donors...finally unleashes its potential for subversive hilarity. But the wait is long and not altogether compensated by Turturro's smooth delivery.

Brain Donors is a short, reasonably snappy attempt at nothing less than a present-day Marx Brothers comedy,

The movie is quick and breezy for its first half-hour, then seems to grind down to a deadened pace: The actors' routines lose their freshness, and the nonexistent story line becomes apparent. The jokes get worse, too. Fortunately, at 80 minutes, the film is too brief to drag. [21 April 1992, p.E7]

Turturro-Nelson-Smith come across as nothing more than three strangers with an out of synch, watered-down routine that flounders as a pale imitation of their hallowed predecessors.