At a time when I’m fraught with accusations of joylessness—specious as the claims are—it’s a relief to express the fun I had at The Brothers Bloom. Bloom isn’t “mainstream”—it’s an indie film, whatever that distinction is worth—but it has oodles of charm and energy (enough, I imagine, to satisfy most viewers), and little of the forced eccentricity and manipulation and snarky cant that are sold in indie-crossover products like Juno. Whereas Juno was labeled “hip sentimentality,” Bloom could be described as “hip romanticism.” It resembles the work of Terry Gilliam, but it’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas without much fear or loathing (or, for that matter, any Vegas). It’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead without the death sentence. Bloom sucks the venom out of existentialism by converting it into a game.

Bloom (Adrien Brody) is weary of being the lead actor in his older brother Stephen’s ceaseless play. Scam-artist Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) is always the triple-threat writer-producer-director, and he’s so adept that he knows every line of Bloom’s perennial resignation speeches by heart. The brothers have partaken in elaborate ruses and moneymaking schemes since they were wee lads bounced between foster homes, so Bloom—the poor sap who’s never been allowed to take charge of his own life—is no longer sure whether he’s a poor sap or a “sensitive anti-hero” or if he’s just playing those parts.

But Stephen is not easily deterred; he rallies Bloom into one last scheme. His ambition is to pull off the ultimate con: one in which everyone gets what he or she wants. Bloom is skeptical at first, but succumbs to luring their mark, a sheltered heiress named Penelope (Rachel Weisz), by insinuating himself into her confidence. She’s been locked away in a mansion all her life, so she’s eager to join in on the meta-heist that’s part of their scam, but also clever enough to spot the literary references in Stephen’s artful schemes. The whole plot is a play on the moribund old heist genre—the sort of film The Italian Job was indebted to. But at its core is Bloom, the jaded existential hero who can’t even be sure he is an existential hero. He even doubts his love for Penelope; it seems as contrived as everything else.

But it’s through these “contrivances,” and its flair for theatricality, that Bloom earns its playful postmodernism. The movie is without the nervous snark that nowadays seems to accompany fourth-wall razing—the sort of smug self-awareness that movies like Kill Bill reek of—because its demiurge is part of the narrative (and part of the joke). Though Stephen’s a bit of a prick—how couldn’t he be?—he’s not a sadist. He designs his contraptions out of love of complexity, meaningfulness and unworldly exactitude—and, of course, for his brother.

Stephen is clearly meant to be the mirror image (or hero) of the writer-director, Rian Johnson, whose previous film was the 2005 Brick (in which modern high school kids spoke in private-eye patois). A friend told me that Johnson’s movies create parallel universes that you’ve got to “buy” to like his movies. I bought the world of Bloom—which is just slightly out of our orbit. (Despite the brothers’ Fiddler on the Roof wardrobe, the film is set in the present-day—but only by default.)

Another friend told me that, as the film went on, he tired of Brody’s performance. Bloom is a bit of a simp, but could he have been played any other way? Brody plays the part with a perpetual sigh, but he uses his peculiar features quite endearingly; he makes Bloom seem comically scrunched up, both physically and emotionally. Weisz looks a bit like the stuffy (and S&M-sexy) Sean Young android from Blade Runner, which makes Penelope’s antisocial outbursts all the more surprising and genial. She can be empty-eyed without seeming vapid. And Ruffalo is bearishly lovable as the big-brother-we-all-wish-we-had. Ruffalo, sporting a defiant crop of stubble, makes the clever choice and doesn’t overplay his huckster. It’s the kind of part that an actor might chomp down on with oversize bites, but Ruffalo shows us his happiness in calculated little nibbles. He makes untrustworthiness a likable trait.

In this movie, even Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi)—the mute pyrotechnician who communicates via detonations—is allowed some emotional shading. Bang Bang’s bombs are a modern form of slapstick, but Johnson’s slapstick isn’t parodistic or there just to be knowing or ironic. It’s there because it makes him laugh. One’s enjoyment of his movie is authentic.