Friday, July 25, 2008

Movie review: Step Brothers

By Alex Bentley

Step Brothers

Brennan Huff, a sporadically employed thirty-nine-year-old, lives with his mother, Nancy. Dale Doback, a terminally unemployed forty-year-old lives with his father, Robert. When Robert and Nancy marry and move in together, Brennan and Dale are forced to live with each other as step brothers. As their narcissism and downright aggressive laziness threaten to tear the family apart, these two middle-aged, immature, overgrown boys will orchestrate an insane, elaborate plan to bring their parents back together. To pull it off, they must form an unlikely bond that maybe, just maybe, will finally get them out of the house.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on Step Brothers

Step Brothers, the new comedy from the team of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (FunnyOrDie.com), is a one-joke film with nary a plot to be found in its 90+ minute running time. And I loved nearly every second of it. Ferrell, McKay, and John C. Reilly – who, along with co-starring is given a story credit – have perfected a way to make the idiotic seem brilliant.

The biggest reason why this film succeeds while other recent Ferrell films (Semi-Pro, Blades of Glory, Talladega Nights) have not lived up to expectations is because everyone involved fully commits to the lunacy going on and never tries to make it anything more than that (well, that and because Ferrell finally decided to do a non-sports film). And because that one joke, in the hands of Ferrell and Reilly, is damn funny.

Ferrell and Reilly play Brennan and Dale, respectively, two 40-something men who have steadfastly refused to grow up. Both still live at home with their single parents: Nancy (Mary Steenburgen), Brennan’s mom, and Robert (Richard Jenkins), Dale’s dad. Nancy and Robert meet at a conference, go through a whirlwind romance (seriously, the thing only takes through the opening credits), making Brennan and Dale step brothers.

Brennan and Dale after one of their "disagreements."

And that’s pretty much all you need to know – everything that follows is pretty much what you would expect of new (teenage) step brothers: Petty fights, death threats, destruction of the house while sleepwalking, desecration of a drum set with a certain body part, and the burial of one by the other. Both Ferrell and Reilly pull off this stupidity because they strike just the right balance between acting like 13-year-olds and knowing they’re adults. This isn’t Big where a kid is living in an adult body; both Brennan and Dale have just become supremely comfortable with their parents taking care of them since each family went through a divorce.

That spoiled nature and sometimes utter cluelessness makes for hilarity of the highest order. Steenburgen and Jenkins are more than game, displaying both acceptance and frustration that only spurs the brothers on to bigger and more asinine acts. Adam Scott plays Derek, Brennan’s younger, more successful brother, to smarmy perfection. And being that this is yet another Judd Apatow-produced film, the profanity spews out of nearly every character’s mouth with impunity. In fact, the sheer amount of obscenities probably makes the film funnier than it has a right to be; anything becomes funny when it’s punctuated by a curse with just the right inflection from Ferrell or Reilly.

Step Brothers nearly succeeds in making an entire film according to the Seinfeld credo of “no learning.” Ferrell, Reilly, and McKay understand that their idea would only thrive if Brennan and Dale maintained their self-centeredness and obliviousness throughout. And except for a minor detour, that’s exactly what they do.

Stupid comedy has never been done better.

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