The specific, unforced strangeness of Eric André’s comedy hasn’t been an easy fit for Hollywood. His surreal and frequently hilarious late-night series The Eric André Show was an unpredictably odd and often violently catastrophic mix of awkward celebrity interviews and daring, dangerous on-the-street pranks and his manic, anything-for-the-bit energy marked him as someone execs would be unwise to entirely ignore.

But André didn’t really feel like someone who desperately needed industry approval and broader acceptance or the inevitable comedy vehicle that would come with it (those projects are also admittedly far less common than they once were). There was an attempt in 2020, a hidden camera hybrid comedy called Bad Trip that saw André lead a fictional narrative playing out in real locations with real people unwittingly cast alongside. But Covid forced a theatrical play into a Netflix premiere and while it had its moments (the zoo-based sexual assault is a work of crude genius), the format was a gamble that, for me, didn’t completely pay off (it was as hit-and-miss as a sketch show). The film’s looseness did at least feel like a more natural fit for André than his follow-up for the streamer, the far more conventional and far less amusing comedy Little Brother, the closest he has come to “fitting in”.

Written by Yes Man’s Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel, it often feels a rewrite away from being a full, winking parody of an overly familiar studio comedy setup where an uptight protagonist finds their work and family life upturned by a wild outsider. Think What About Bob? or The Cable Guy or Planes, Trains and Automobiles with formula mostly kept at its most basic (let’s hope this very important work event isn’t ruined!) and only the odd flash of something sharper or legitimately weird to wake us up (one can only feel André truly letting loose in the inevitable credit-based outtakes).

There’s just too much in the script that’s so box-tickingly predictable (would you be surprised to learn that the finale features a character giving an apology speech in front of an audience before not one but two “there’s something I need to say to you” makeup scenes?) which again could be funny if the film were poking fun at the material or worthwhile if the writers were adding real humour and heart to it but Little Brother doesn’t work as satirical or serious or silly. There’s potential in the idea, John Cena’s tightly wound realtor surprised by the reappearance of his “little brother”, played of course by André, who he was once paired up with as part of a mentoring scheme. Decades later, he’s a psychiatric hospital escapee whose crude, accident-prone theatrics threaten to derail his big brother’s marriage (to a slumming Michelle Monaghan), his relationship to his obnoxious biological brother (Christopher Meloni, having fun) and his attempt to make it as the star of a Bravo-like reality show about real estate.

The obvious recall here is 2008’s Role Models, where Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott’s energy drink salesmen are forced to take part in a big/little program, but that film, from a more glorious era for the genre, managed to be both funny and heartfelt (remember when comedies used to manage both?) and found smarter ways to explore an unusual, intimate relationship (as a former big brother myself, I’m very aware of how ripe the material is). I found a few moments here lightly amusing (a Paris Hilton cameo where she feigns devotion to the unhoused, a post-rimming request for a minty drink) but it’s largely, disappointingly short on real laughs, a panicked maximalism to its bawdiness replacing anything more smart and thought through. André is as committed as one would expect but while his antics might be big and debauched and swimming in bodily fluids, for him they’re still a little restrained while also lacking the more particular, nightmarish weirdness we crave from him. Cena is a competent, if unexciting, straight guy while otherwise talented comedic actors like Caleb Hearon and Ego Nwodim are underserved by subpar one-liners, the script stuck in third gear.

As disappointed as I might have been for André, I was similarly glum to see the name of Matt Spicer as director. He co-wrote and directed 2017’s excellent dark comedy Ingrid Goes West, which explored a similarly stretched, obsessive dynamic with women, but made both sharp observations about what a contemporary digital friendship looks like (it remains one of the greatest and still entirely relevant films about the internet) while also finding the humanity of two knotty, unsure people struggling to figure out what happiness looks like. It was as rich as his follow-up is poor and the superficial similarities only make this one that much more disappointing, Little Brother the bastard child that might need cutting off.

• Little Brother is now available on Netflix