Review: ‘Step Brothers’

Scott:

Need help to reestablish yourself as a comedy king? Hire Judd Apatow to help write/produce your movie. As the reigning golden boy for Hollywood comedy movies, Judd lent himself to ‘Step Brothers’ and along with Will Ferrell, John C Reilly and Adam McKay, created comic gold platinum.

There isn’t a lot of story in ‘Step Brothers’ but you don’t need it with WIll Ferrell and John C Reilly throwing at you two of the funniest characters we have seen from either of them in a while. Ferrell has stepped back to his ‘Anchorman’ days and really delivers a powerfully funny performance. These two guys know how to play off each other better than anyone else in Hollywood right now.

The most surprising thing in this movie is probably the gratuitous balls on the drums scene, no I am kidding. At the end of the movie Reilly and Ferrell rock out to a Spanish opera song with Ferrell singing… so yes, in this movie he does speak Spanish!

If you want to see a movie and laugh until you pee yourself like a little girl, then go see this movie tonight!

(3.5 stars out of 5)

Ram Man:

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are related, at least the are for a couple of hours this summer in the new smash comedy “Step Brothers”. Ferrell and Reilly have team with Saturday Night Live writer Adam McKay to create this hilarious tale of growing old but retaining your inner youth.

Brennan Huff (Ferrell) is a spoiled 40 year old idiot that still lives with his mother Nancy (Mary Steenburgen). Dale Doback (Reilly) is a 40 year old lazy slob that is living at home sponging off his dad Robert (Richard Jenkins). When the parents meet and fall for each other at a medical conference it begins a truly unholy union of two siblings. They don’t work..they don’t do anything except watch TV, play the drums, and devise ways to eliminate the other brother and become the sole spoiled kid of the house again. This film is loaded with physical comedy..from Dale and Brennan beat up by 12 yr. olds and forced to eat dog crap..Brennan rubbing his ball sack all over Dale’s drum set. There are numerous fights and one scene where Brennan buries Dale alive in the front yard. This begins to drive a wedge between Nancy and Richard ..so they lay down the law… Get Jobs and become responsible… because we are selling the house and sailing around the world! Dale and Brennan finally bond and unite over a common foe..Brennan’s younger successful brother Derek (Adam Scott). Derek runs a successful helicopter sales and leasing business and has the perfect family..wife Alice (who hates the very air he breathes)and two kids Tommy and Tiffany. The four spend their time running with the A-list and singing Guns N Roses in four part harmony. After Dale punches Derek in the nose,Alice is smitten with him and the rest of the movie they begin a not so secret romance.Dale and Brennan, or we can call them tweedle-dumb and tweedle-dumber, decide to start their own international entertainment company and shoot a music video. Didn’t I mention that Brennan has the voice of an angel… NOT. So the two shoot a music video “Boats and Hoes” and just as the song ends ..Richard yells “who’s driving my boat?” That’s when it crashes and sinks… destroying their plans and whats left of the marriage.

Step Brothers, while being a tad too long is hilarious from start to finish. You can definitely see that Ferrell and Reilly make a great team and should continue to do projects together in the future. A word of warning though… this one is rated R for a reason. There are more dirty words and F-bombs in this than in all of the seasons of South Park combined… so keep the kids at home. Step Brothers is a fun movie that will have you re-thinking the phase … “He’s my brother from another mother!”

(4 out of 5 stars)

Travis:

Its Will Ferrell! What did you expect? Sure, he’s done ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ which ended up being a surprising semi-dramatic role for him and he did very well. But, what do we all expect when going to see a Will Ferrell movie? That’s right … crazy, off-the-wall, sometimes raunchy, otherwise Ferrell comedy. Throw in John C. Reilly and you’ve got the return of “shake and bake” … only better! Brennan’s (Ferrell) mom meets Dale’s (Reilly) dad at a medical conference and they fall in love at first sight. They quickly get married and decide to move into one house, all four of them. Yeah, Brennan and Dale are both 40-year-old men who never grew up and still live at home. Now, they must live together as sworn worst enemies … step brothers!

Are you still with me? Good, because we’ve covered about 75% of the story now. You weren’t expecting something intelligent, were you? Despite there being ay significant amount of story, there is enough to make a film… a very, VERY funny film. Ferrell and Reilly work so well together and have a chemistry in comedy that we don’t see much anymore. I’m not suggesting these two comedic thespians equal the likes of Laurel and Hardy, or Abbott and Costello, but their chemistry together reminds of the classic past successful pairings. Through a series of mishaps as enemies, brought upon by their own immaturity, Brennan and Dale have a mutual epiphany that they’re actually best friends. Then, through another series of mishaps as best friends, they are forced to grow up and change their lives to save their parent’s marriage.

‘Step Brothers’ holds nothing back in the face of good taste, relying at times on gags involving reproductive organs, abusive physical comedy and good ole fashioned foul language. The key to why all this old school low-brow comedy works is the impeccable timing and talent of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. In an attempt to divert the spotlight momentarily away from the big shot brothers, Dale’s father (Dr. Doback) is played by Richard Jenkins, a favorite character actor of mine. Jenkins comedic ability is truly on display in ‘Step Brothers’ but unfortunately will go under-appreciated as he’s left acting in the shadows of the two stars. Don’t see this for any reason other than a solid 95 minutes on non-stop, belly-quivering, “holy crap I can’t breath laughter”. Kids need not attempt to see this film without adult supervision, but when has that stopped us? Actually, this movie will probably find itself more detrimental to unsuspecting proper adults than to kids who will probably relate quite easily to these two 40-year-old brats.

(3.5 out of 5 stars)

Michelle:

The last time we saw these two funny men was in ‘Talladega Nights.’ This time Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, along with director Adam McKay, have decidedly stepped it up a notch playing 39 & 40 something losers who still live with their respective single parents in their latest uproarious collaboration, ‘Step Brothers.’ To make things worse, when Nancy and Robert (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) marry, Brennan and Dale are instant step-brothers in this screwy dysfunctional family. After their constant bickering, brawling, and a bullying brother, Derek (Adam Scott), threaten to destroy Mom and Dad’s marriage, the two join forces to become true brothers in order to keep the family together.

(4 out of 5 stars)

Zac:

Will Ferrell and Adam McKay re-team, with the help of John C. Reilly, for their third picture together and falls way short of being as good as their previous entries.
Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (Reilly) are both 40 something men still living at home with their parents. Nancy, (Mary Steenburgen) Brennan’s mom, meets Robert (Richard Jenkins), Dale’s dad, at a medical conference and they hit it off immediately and quickly get married. They proceed to move into Dale’s house and Brennan and Dale are forced to share the same room as they begin to wage war on each other with feverish sibling rivalry.
The two start off as bitter enemies before finding a common enemy in Brennan’s younger brother Derek, who is stuck up, successful, and pretty much a major douche bag. As Dale and Brennan begin to bond they begin concocting ridiculous dreams and begin to perform silly and ludicrous acts as they bond even further.
As their antics begin to interfere with the life of Nancy and Robert, a deadline is laid down for the boys to get jobs and move out so that the couple can go on their sail boating trip around the world.
I will stop here, as this is about everything the trailer reveals, but is pretty much 2/3 of the movie’s material is covered in a simple paragraph. But if you are going to see this movie, you aren’t going for the plot because there really isn’t one. You are going for the gags and jokes, and unfortunately they are fairly hit or miss; when one of the best laughs is a fart, you know you are barely treading water. Anyways, a lot of the material is just plain dumb, for no reason other than simply being dumb. It’s just a series of stupid, silly, shit that is moderately humorous at best on most occasions. I will admit, the movie made me laugh out loud on a few occasions and the final bit after the credits was the funniest scene of the film, but the movie is filled with way too many dead spaces that you are just left thinking, “what the hell?” and not in a good way.
The acting by the two leads is done surprisingly well though, as the nail the adolescent shtick and never falter through out. Reilly and Ferrell must have had a blast filming this but their fun didn’t translate into us having fun as much as they probably would have liked. Adam Scott is pretty good as the douche brother, but he also was involved in his fair share of misses in the film, car singing worst scene in a movie this year. Special shout out to Kathryn Hahn who steals every scene she is in as well as the wife of Derek, I will let one of the genuinely funny pieces of material be a surprise though. Jenkins and Steenburgen both seem a little out of place in this film though, and it’s hard to buy Steenburgen as Ferrell’s mother as well. The couple just seems awkward and you can see them thinking about what ridiculous line they can come up with before the deliver it, and usually it just involves them dropping an f-bomb.
Speaking of the f-bomb, which I think can be absolutely hilarious if used right, it was just thrown around like the filmmakers thought it would be funny to just utter the word. It literally seemed to be used as a device for laughs, “hey, look, we said fuck, isn’t that funny?” Anyways the cursing was so random and only in there for the sake of saying hey we can curse, it just didn’t come over as funny as cursing can be in a film/TV if used properly, i.e. the bleeped out cursing in Arrested Development.
Anyways, in the end, Step Brothers is a marginally successful comedy that could have been a lot better. The humor is simple, stupid and there is zero story whatsoever. It pails in comparison to the best stuff Apatow has produced, 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Sarah Marshall, because it doesn’t have a heart or soul, and isn’t as fun and silly as the other Apatow/McKay collaborations Anchorman and Talladega Nights. Granted those later two films grew better with repeat viewings as you caught more of the one-liners, and I am sure there are a couple gems left to be discovered in this, but I don’t think it is going to boost itself up that much higher then it currently is sitting at; rent it.

(2.5 out of 5)

[rating: 3.5/5]