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Step Brothers

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Will Ferrell's Anchorman, directed by his old SNL writing buddy Adam McKay, was released in 2004 and immediately became a dorm room classic thanks to Ferrell's then-new brand of arrested-development humor. For their next collaboration, Ferrel and McKay made Talladega Nights, a big-budget comedy that managed to both satirize and celebrate NASCAR culture.

I liked both of them a lot -- in fact, writing this is making me want to go watch Talladega Nights again. We've seen diminishing returns with Ferrell's last two sports comedies, 2007's relatively stupid Blades of Glory and last spring's iffy Semi-Pro, so I was looking forward to the sports-less Step Brothers, which, though it's yet another entry in the men-who-won't-grow-up genre, features the return of the Talladega team: Ferrell, McKay, and John C. Reilly.

It's bad. It's not just the least of the Ferrell/McKay collaborations; it's the worst movie Ferrell has headlined, period. Ferrell's lesser movies tend to get by on a handful of legitimately funny sequences, but here even the parts that should be funny, even the parts that you're telling yourself are funny and are trying to crack a smile for, just make you lower your head in embarrassment for everyone involved. I'm not being dramatic. I actually did that. A bunch of times.

The story is simple: if you remember what the title is, you've got everything you need to know. Ferrell plays Brennan. Reilly plays Dale. Their parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) just got married, and since they still lived at home at 40, they have to move in together. First they hate each other, then they become best friends. That's it.

Brennan and Dale, though both forty, act so childish you'll think they're borderline autistic. They're like eleven-year-olds, if all eleven-year-olds were massive A-holes. This creates a problem for the two parents. On the surface, they're two of the most likable people you could meet, and Jenkins and Steenburgen are great actors, have great chemistry with each other, and seem to be playing around and enjoying themselves. But rooting for their relationship is tainted by the undeniable fact that these people must've been horrible parents. Like, really horrible. (They also must've had their kids when they were eighteen and fourteen, but never mind.)

Also making things worse is that the step brothers have nothing to do, really, so the only through-line to be found is that -- get this -- without meaning to, they slowly destroy their parents' relationship. Yep, in a weird way, the step brothers are the villains of the story, which is kind of a problem since they're supposed to be the protagonists and thus we're supposed to be rooting for them. But rooting for them to do what? Split Jenkins and Steenburgen up? That ...