Will Farrell tea bagging a drum set is not funny. John C. Reilly in bicycle shorts or a Chewbacca mask is not funny. The two stars pulverizing a playground full of eleven-year-olds is also, you guessed it, not funny. In fact, it is desperate and pathetic.
It is small consolation that one of the egregious scenes in the movie takes place after the credits roll. Unfortunately though, the aisles and exits at the theatre I saw Step Brothers at were clogged with spectators who, beyond any intelligible reason as far as I can tell, were amused enough by the first 100 minutes to stick around for the encore, so I was stuck.
I find it necessary to qualify my above remarks, as well as those I have not yet written down, by saying I do not object to raunchy, low-brow humor. Any one of the images mentioned in the lead of this review could have been as funny as the pie scene in American Pie or the testicle/zipper shot in There's Something About Mary. But there needs to be some context and perhaps a little motivation as well. We need to know why something is funny, and understand how it fits in with the world its movie occupies. The images themselves do not suffice, no matter how shocking or disgusting.
If you are not yet familiar with the general set-up of Step Brothers through the movie's excessively aggressive and ubiquitous marketing campaign, it is rather simple. Will Farrell and John C. Reilly play two slacker children- one is forty years old and the other is pushing forty with a short stick- whose successful, motivated single parents get married, and therefore begin the weirdest Brady Bunch type family in movie history. Farrell and Reilly's characters hate each other upon sight and bicker insufferably until they realize they are cut from the same degenerate cloth and then become best pals.
Eventually, the father, a revered and important physician played by Richard Jenkins, becomes so enraged by the overgrown adolescents' antics, that he delivers an ultimatum to them. Get jobs and move out by the end of the month. I feel this is all the plot exposition this film deserves, because Step Brothers is more about a series of failed gags and profanity for profanity's sake.
I consider myself to have a very high tolerance for explicit, raunchy sexual behavior and an even higher tolerance for foul language, but even I found Step Brothers to be puke-inducing, more than a bit rough. Remember the tea bagging scene mentioned in the lead. We do get to see every hairy inch of Will Farrell's scrotum. It does not advance the plot. It is not the logical conclusion of a series of events. It is not executed with any sort of subtlety or surprise, it is telegraphed a week ahead of time. It serves no function whatsoever except to show Will Farrell's testicles because Farrell, who co-wrote the script with director Adam McKay, thinks it is funny. It is not, and neither are the endless gags which continually use sex, genitalia, cursing, etc. as bludgeons. It is not so much a movie as an exercise in arbitrary weirdness and manic perversion.
The clerk who sold me my ticket said that while most of the younger audiences seemed to love the film, many middle-aged moviegoers had left the film enraged, demanding to be refunded. To me, this does not demonstrate a schism in tolerance, but a schism in taste. Today's middle-aged moviegoer grew up with Animal House and Porky's, and was quick to embrace the aforementioned American Pie and There's Something About Mary. And anybody willing to put down ten bucks to see a movie starring the man behind Old School must have been prepared for some politically incorrect humor. However, in Step Brothers it is not funny, just depressing, mean-spirited and reprehensible.
Even more depressing, is the fact that there is a kernel of a good idea here. There is endless comedic possibility of two social misfits with Peter Pan complexes who are seemingly oblivious to all real world expectations. Unfortunately, this movie is completely unwilling to push the frontiers of any sort of substance whatsoever. It just falls back on the same safe, broad humor that so many of Farrell's previous efforts are marked by.
Worse yet, is that the two lead characters' quirks are made less interesting by the supporting characters in the movie. Everybody is pretty much the exact same. Even the supposed smart, successful people in Step Brothers behave like social deviants, giving Farrell and Reilly nothing to bounce their energy off of. They hardly even stand out as weirdos. Even the straight-laced father succumbs to visions of being a T-Rex. It is not a fantasy, but a goal.
There is something potentially fascinating about a successful doctor who aspires to be a member of a different species, one that is extinct to boot, but like so much of the rest of the movie, the joke is undercut by the tone of the rest of the film. The undeniable chemistry between Farrell and Reilly is the only thing that makes this film supportable. They really embody these characters and go all the way with them. Unfortunately, that is all the way to the toilet. The film displays many symptoms of Farrell's classic "Ain't I cute" syndrome.
This film makes the classic mistake of believing goofiness is an adequate substitute for wit. All comedy writers, directors, and actors would serve themselves well to observe a few basic lessons. Smart people are funnier than dumb people. Secure, well-adjusted people are funnier than zany outcasts. And most importantly, a bad gag done loudly is even more annoying than the same bad gag performed at a humble volume.
In a summer of surprisingly strong major studio releases, Step Brothers does what it can to taint the cinematic gene pool.
It is small consolation that one of the egregious scenes in the movie takes place after the credits roll. Unfortunately though, the aisles and exits at the theatre I saw Step Brothers at were clogged with spectators who, beyond any intelligible reason as far as I can tell, were amused enough by the first 100 minutes to stick around for the encore, so I was stuck.
I find it necessary to qualify my above remarks, as well as those I have not yet written down, by saying I do not object to raunchy, low-brow humor. Any one of the images mentioned in the lead of this review could have been as funny as the pie scene in American Pie or the testicle/zipper shot in There's Something About Mary. But there needs to be some context and perhaps a little motivation as well. We need to know why something is funny, and understand how it fits in with the world its movie occupies. The images themselves do not suffice, no matter how shocking or disgusting.
If you are not yet familiar with the general set-up of Step Brothers through the movie's excessively aggressive and ubiquitous marketing campaign, it is rather simple. Will Farrell and John C. Reilly play two slacker children- one is forty years old and the other is pushing forty with a short stick- whose successful, motivated single parents get married, and therefore begin the weirdest Brady Bunch type family in movie history. Farrell and Reilly's characters hate each other upon sight and bicker insufferably until they realize they are cut from the same degenerate cloth and then become best pals.
Eventually, the father, a revered and important physician played by Richard Jenkins, becomes so enraged by the overgrown adolescents' antics, that he delivers an ultimatum to them. Get jobs and move out by the end of the month. I feel this is all the plot exposition this film deserves, because Step Brothers is more about a series of failed gags and profanity for profanity's sake.
I consider myself to have a very high tolerance for explicit, raunchy sexual behavior and an even higher tolerance for foul language, but even I found Step Brothers to be puke-inducing, more than a bit rough. Remember the tea bagging scene mentioned in the lead. We do get to see every hairy inch of Will Farrell's scrotum. It does not advance the plot. It is not the logical conclusion of a series of events. It is not executed with any sort of subtlety or surprise, it is telegraphed a week ahead of time. It serves no function whatsoever except to show Will Farrell's testicles because Farrell, who co-wrote the script with director Adam McKay, thinks it is funny. It is not, and neither are the endless gags which continually use sex, genitalia, cursing, etc. as bludgeons. It is not so much a movie as an exercise in arbitrary weirdness and manic perversion.
The clerk who sold me my ticket said that while most of the younger audiences seemed to love the film, many middle-aged moviegoers had left the film enraged, demanding to be refunded. To me, this does not demonstrate a schism in tolerance, but a schism in taste. Today's middle-aged moviegoer grew up with Animal House and Porky's, and was quick to embrace the aforementioned American Pie and There's Something About Mary. And anybody willing to put down ten bucks to see a movie starring the man behind Old School must have been prepared for some politically incorrect humor. However, in Step Brothers it is not funny, just depressing, mean-spirited and reprehensible.
Even more depressing, is the fact that there is a kernel of a good idea here. There is endless comedic possibility of two social misfits with Peter Pan complexes who are seemingly oblivious to all real world expectations. Unfortunately, this movie is completely unwilling to push the frontiers of any sort of substance whatsoever. It just falls back on the same safe, broad humor that so many of Farrell's previous efforts are marked by.
Worse yet, is that the two lead characters' quirks are made less interesting by the supporting characters in the movie. Everybody is pretty much the exact same. Even the supposed smart, successful people in Step Brothers behave like social deviants, giving Farrell and Reilly nothing to bounce their energy off of. They hardly even stand out as weirdos. Even the straight-laced father succumbs to visions of being a T-Rex. It is not a fantasy, but a goal.
There is something potentially fascinating about a successful doctor who aspires to be a member of a different species, one that is extinct to boot, but like so much of the rest of the movie, the joke is undercut by the tone of the rest of the film. The undeniable chemistry between Farrell and Reilly is the only thing that makes this film supportable. They really embody these characters and go all the way with them. Unfortunately, that is all the way to the toilet. The film displays many symptoms of Farrell's classic "Ain't I cute" syndrome.
This film makes the classic mistake of believing goofiness is an adequate substitute for wit. All comedy writers, directors, and actors would serve themselves well to observe a few basic lessons. Smart people are funnier than dumb people. Secure, well-adjusted people are funnier than zany outcasts. And most importantly, a bad gag done loudly is even more annoying than the same bad gag performed at a humble volume.
In a summer of surprisingly strong major studio releases, Step Brothers does what it can to taint the cinematic gene pool.