Step Brothers Movie Review - JB strikes again

Step Brothers Movie ReviewThey’re not the most intelligent movies made, but sometimes you’re in the right kind of mood for a boys-will-be-boys gross-out movie full of slapstick humour and crude one-liners. When that mood strikes, go see Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly’s latest collaboration, Step Brothers. Otherwise, it’s a juvenile family union worth considering making up an excuse to miss. Something like a very important fishing trip, perhaps.

One’s mother (Mary Steenburgen) marries the other’s father (Richard Jenkins), and now Dale (Reilly) and Brennan (Ferrell) suddenly find themselves being stepbrothers. This wouldn’t be an issue at all, or a movie, if it weren’t for the fact that both forty-something year old men were still unemployed, immature, and living with their respective parents. After their parents have enabled the arrested development of their grown children for so long, both men must now share everything, including a room, and try and get along like grown ups.

As with most new stepsiblings, there are a lot of reservations and trepidation with accepting a new family member that often manifest in the form of name calling, fist fighting, and attempts to make the other one cry—some of it more funny that the rest—except in this case, throw in some chest hair and wrinkles to the teenaged angst mix and you have the relationship Dale and Brennan share.

That is, until Dale quickly develops the same distaste for Brennan’s younger, successful, bullying and confusingly musical-loving brother Derek (Adam Scott). Then, both men become fast friends and do everything they can to fight their parents attempts to get them to grow up and get out and find success. It winds up costing them their parents marriage, their home, their dependence, and even their brotherhood, and inadvertently forces them to become grown ups.

As with any Ferrell, or even Apatow-related, movie the end goal is achieved after a series of clumsy mishaps, gross-out fight sequences, an attempt at a heartfelt montage, awkward relationships, and a dragged-on ending. But, whether you’re mature enough to admit it, it does bring on some of the funny.

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August 6, 2008 | Filed Under Movie reviews | 2 Comments 
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