Ever since The
40-Year-Old Virgin
laid the first row of bricks in Judd Apatow's comedy kingdom, profane tales of
arrested development have become so ubiquitous that they're seemingly the only
type of comedy Hollywood is interested in producing. Though Apatow started this
trend of overgrown man-children and the women who tolerate them, the blame
can't rest entirely at his feet. In fact, the two films Apatow has written and
directed—Virgin and Knocked Up—help account for where disappointments like Step Brothers
go wrong. No matter how absurd the situations can get in Apatow's films, they're
always grounded in characters and observations that are recognizably human and
unbound by high-concept gimmicks.
Working again with
frequent partner Adam McKay, his director and co-writer on cartoonishly funny
comedies like Anchorman and Talladega Nights, Will Ferrell errs on the side of the
outrageous in Step Brothers and winds up trampling all over a great premise.
Ferrell and his multi-talented Talladega buddy John C. Reilly star as a couple of
unemployed layabouts who are 40 or approaching it but still living under their
respective parents' roofs. When Ferrell's mother (Mary Steenburgen) and
Reilly's father (Richard Jenkins) get married, the four of them move in
together. At first, the stepbrothers are at each other's throats, but over
time, they find they have too much in common—a passion for velociraptors,
Shark Week, and amateur karate, for starters—to stay enemies for long.
One of the elements that
separates Step Brothers from other arrested-development comedies also happens to be
what makes it worse: Ferrell and Reilly aren't adolescents refusing to cross
the threshold into adulthood, they're more like petulant 10-year-olds given to
bunkbeds, treehouses, and temper tantrums. It's hard to believe that two people
could reach middle age acting like grade-schoolers, and not in a funny way,
either; the execution spoils most of the scenes by substituting raw, Adam
Sandler-like aggression for real wit. This is a loud, ugly, foul comedy whose
shortcomings extend far into the supporting cast, including reliably excellent
character actors like Jenkins and Steenburgen, both coaxed into overplaying
what should be straight roles. There's too much talent involved for the film to
not score a few incidental laughs—a band that only covers '80s Billy Joel,
say, or a singing voice so mellifluous that it's likened to a combination of "Fergie
and Jesus"—but Step Brothers doesn't know when to dial it back.