Ryan McNeil
I’m not sure why I remember this, but nine years ago, there was a prime time special celebrating the 25th anniversary of Saturday Night Live. During the show, Tom Hanks performed a bit where he was asked who the most talented cast member was. He answered by saying “Will Ferrell…lemme tell ya somethin’, that guy is going places.”
I’ve watched Ferrell go places for eight years now…and now after watching STEP BROTHERS ,I really wish he’d go someplace new.
STEP BROTHERS begins as the story of Robert and Nancy. Robert (Richard Jenkins, best known from TV’s Six Feet Under) is a doctor who meets Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) at a pharmaceutical conference. They share an instant physical attraction, but their connection is deepened by the fact that they both live a similar situation. Both Robert and Nancy have forty year old sons who still live at home. That’s the bolt of lightning that fuses their love, since they are soon married, and their sons Brennan (Will Ferrell) and Dale (John C. Reilly) are now step-brothers.
The only place the story has to go after that is to show absurd situation after absurd situation that Dale and Brennan get into as they act like spoiled twelve year-olds. If you’re curious about what you’re in for, pop in the DVD of WALK HARD, BLADES OF GLORY, or TALLADEGA NIGHTS. That’s the bottle of humour you’re in for…except with STEP BROTHERS you’re getting the bottle that’s been opened and left on the counter for three days. In the sun.
The jokes are the same frat-boy lines we’ve been sitting through for four years now, and they aren’t getting any funnier…in fact they’re making all the previous movies look even worse. I might have been able to turn a blind eye to such repetition, if it wasn’t for the atrocious situation STEP BROTHERS tries to serve like last week’s leftovers. The set up for this movie is so amazingly absurd, and I can’t for a moment believe that people as smart as Robert or Nancy would allow their children to become such immature leeches.
One head-shaking scene in particular involves Will Ferrell’s testicles. For some reason, The Apatow-approved comedy team have landed on the notion that male genitalia should work it’s way into every film (STEP BROTHERS marks the fourth in a row). here’s the thing – as a guy, I can agree that the naked male body is a source of endless ridiculousness. But there’s a difference between funny situational nudity, and nudity that tries to create a funny situation. If you’ve seen both movies, it’s the difference between FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL and WALK HARD.
In this case, I’m putting the blame squarely on Ferrell, since he co-wrote it and co-produced it along with starring in it. More than any other A-Lister in all of Hollywood, Ferrell needs to turn down the volume. His films make money, but his outlandish comedy will only please audiences for so long, and the curve from funny to stale is a sharp one. Just ask Jim Carrey.
I could rail on about this movie for a few hundred more words, but truthfully I’d much rather try to forget that I saw it. STEP BROTHERS gave me a giggle or two (“That voice sounds like a combination of Fergie and Jesus”), but I could only recommend it be seen on TV…at 3 a.m….when you’ve done a complete flip through all the other stations…and realized that you’ve seen all those infomercials already.
Haha, love this review. Helps that I agree with every word, too.
I ended up shifting blame away from Ferrell as a charitable favor, but it’s hard to continue to forgive him in these movies. Still, I thought he was responsible for the few moments that were funny.
Good review, well-written…I think Ferrell struck on something a few years ago but now the “hey, we know it’s stupid but we don’t care, it’s still funny” brand of humor is growing stale. Did you like his earlier films at the time or have you always been anti-Ferrell?
See that’s the thing movieman – I haven’t…
I still laugh everytime I watch OLD SCHOOL, ELF is one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time, I truly love STRANGER THAN FICTION, and I even TALLADEGA NIGHTS.
It’s just lately that his movies have started rubbing me the wrong way.