After a day of non-stop walking, I still had some energy left to watch a movie so I decided to watch something light. It took me 30 minutes to pick one and eventually went with Step Brothers because it had been on my list for ages and it was about time for me to watch it.
The story follows Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and Dale Doback (John C. Reilly), two unemployed, nearly 40-year-old slackers who still live with their parents. When Brennen's mother, Nancy (Mary Steenburgen), marries Dale's father, Robert (Richard Jenkins), Brennan and Dale are forced to share a room. Despite their personalities being so alike, they don't get along very well, but when Brennan's successful young brother, Derek (Adam Scott), the two begin to bond.
Step Brothers's plot is not thin, it's non-existent as the film is mostly a vehicle/excuse for Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly to do crude sketches. While that exactly something one would expect from a movie with those two, the absolutely ridiculous story, the fact that almost everything happens by chance, that there are subplots that only make the story more dreadful, and that overall it feels like an improvisation after another, not even good ones, these things still bothered me.
Not as much as the characters did though. Not only they are incredibly stupid and unbelievable — I mean, the two main characters are two adults who behave like two retarded kids —, but they also are very unlikeable and quite irritating, and the only reason I sided with them was because Brennan's brother, Derek, was an asshole, with a capital aitch.
The performances aren't much better as they are dull, unbelievable and uninspired. Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins both do a good job though as the parents, the only two responsible characters in the entire film, and Kathryn Hahn, who gets the chance to go nuts in the role of Derek's sexually repressed wife, is quite funny.
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| Columbia Pictures |
I wouldn't have given a damn about the script and the terrible acting though if Step Brothers was a funny movie. Unfortunately, neither the comedy works. I'm not sure what's the issue here, maybe the fact that Adam McKay didn't want to make a comedy but a drama, the thing is that the comedy just falls flat. I smiled when Brennan and Dale turned their single beds into a bunk bed and it collapsed, and the job interview sequence was quite something, but everything else just didn't work for me. Ferrell and Reilly try to be funny but the funny jokes and gags are just not a part of the script.
