For the Brothers Bloom life is no fairytale. Instead it's more of a melodramatic action caper involving plenty of intrigue, nitroglycerine and gunplay. You see, the siblings are con artists, their very existence dictated by the elaborate deceptions conceived and then conducted by the brains of the family business, Stephen (Mark Ruffalo).

But Bloom (Adrien Brody) longs for an "unwritten life", a genuine adventure free of his older brother's dialogue and plot points. So it's with major trepidation that he agrees to their big blowout gig ? milking an heiress who quite literally is crazy rich.

Plainly put, beautiful 30-something Penelope Stamp is eccentric. Ensconced in her family's mansion since childhood she's taken to collecting hobbies ? from breakdancing to making pinhole cameras out of watermelons ? and learning languages ? 14 ? to while away the time.

So when the two young men ? Stephen and Bloom, natch ? crash into her life with the promise of adventure, she parks her Lamborghini Gallardo (in a wall) and joins them on a Eurotrip of antique smuggling, hard-drinking Belgians, police arrest, car bombs, and the accidental demolition of Prague Castle.

The Oscar-winning actors, clearly up for the hijinks, keep the mood suitably light and screwy in the Wes Anderson tradition of indie US comedy. But just as Stephen appears to lose grip of his most daring scheme yet, writer-director Rian Johnson leaves behind his story's quirky individualism somewhere in Greece. And the mainstream narrative ? all deceptive twists and turns ? that assumes control, leaves little room for the lovingly-created characters to show off their truly unique traits.

Bloom, predictably, breaks the first rule in the scammers' handbook. In failing to deliver fully on the initial charm of 'Brothers Bloom' Johnson, more surprisingly, breaks the first rule in the filmmakers' handbook.