Step Brothers
I sat kind of speechless after watching “Step Brothers.” Not something that happens very often during a comedy- I wasn’t even so dumbstruck by “The Love Guru”- but something just struck me as wrong about the film, and not in that pleasant “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut” way. Make no mistake- laughs were earned by this movie. But a genuine air of unpleasantness seeped its’ way into my thinking in retrospect. On the whole- this movie doesn’t work.
Will Ferrell’s always been hit-or-miss with me anyway. I didn’t find his cameo in “Wedding Crashers” funny. “Anchorman” was mildly amusing, but hardly the classic people consider it to be. “Talladega Nights” is more my speed, same with “Elf” and “Stranger Than Fiction” (and nobody knock his cameo in “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back”). Hell, even this year’s earlier “Semi-Pro” was worthy of purchase compared to this movie. I don’t think I’ve felt so awkward after watching a comedy since “There’s Something About Mary,” which my longtime readers will know I was NOT a fan of.
This time around, Ferrell and co-writer/director Adam McKay (who previously collaborated on “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights”) are telling another story about arrested development, except this time, it hits a little too close to home. Now, Ferrell plays Brennan, a 39-year old man still living with his mother Nancy (Mary Steenburgen, “Parenthood”), who on a job (I guess she’s a reporter or something) falls in love with a groundbreaking doctor named Robert (Richard Jenkins, the recent “The Visitor”), who has a 40 year-old of his own- Dale (John C. Reilly)- living at home. When Nancy and Robert get married, Nancy and Brennan move in with Robert and Dale and, well, if you’ve seen the previews, you know what to expect.
The stuff that was funny in the trailer- the bunk beds, the burying of Dale alive, the bedtime talk- is still funny, and everyone- even Steenburgen and Jenkins- gets in on the laughs at least once or twice. So what’s the problem? I mentioned “There’s Something About Mary” earlier. This film shares that film’s unbridled desire to be as crude as it wants to be (beware that R-rating parents; they aren’t kidding with it), and trust me when I say it doesn’t work in this film’s favor. The same feeling prevailed watching- on DVD- the unrated versions of “Talladega Nights” and “Dodgeball,” movies that made me laugh like a monkey in theatres, but in these profanity-laded DVD versions, made me feel like their makers had done them a disservice by being so vulgar. At least when Matt Stone and Trey Parker have gone to such extremes in their films (from “South Park” to “Orgazmo” to “Team America”) there was a satirical point for them to do so. This just felt mean-spirited and too much- when the parents get in on badmouthing their children, prepare for a little bit of shock.
It’s also sloppy filmmaking. Forget that there’s not enough plot here for 80 minutes, let along 100, McKay doesn’t know how to cut a film like this for maximum hilarity, and his cinematic eye is on the sketch comedy level- a flaw his producer here (modern comedy master Judd Apatow) has found his way past- that still calls to mind his “SNL” background. But that won’t matter to people who get into the anarchy in this film, although if my opinion is in the majority, don’t expect those people to be many. Certainly not as many that made “Mary” such a vulgar smash. This film offers more laughs than I got out of that film. Too bad it couldn’t offer much more than that.
