This family ain’t big enough for the both of them…
Produced by JUDD APATOW (40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Pineapple Express) and directed and co-written by regular Ferrell collaborator ADAM McKAY (Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, TV’s Saturday Night Live), Step Brothers stars FERRELL and REILLY as two spoiled guys who become competitive step brothers when their single parents get hitched.
FERRELL plays Brennan Huff, a sporadically employed thirty-nine-year-old who lives with his mother, Nancy (MARY STEENBURGEN, Elf, Nixon). REILLY plays Dale Doback, a terminally unemployed forty-year-old who lives with his father, Robert (RICHARD JENKINS, Burn After Reading, The Visitor, TV’s Six Feet Under). When Robert and Nancy marry and move in together, Brennan and Dale are forced to live with each other as step brothers. As their narcissism and downright aggressive laziness threaten to tear the family apart, these two middle-aged, immature, overgrown boys will orchestrate an insane, elaborate plan to bring their parents back together. To pull it off, they must form an unlikely bond that maybe, just maybe, will finally get them out of the house.
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"Take some tissues - this is laugh till you cry funny"
As I sat down in the cinema, reading through the press release, I started to get a good feeling about this film. I've now started to actually take a look at the writers of films rather than try to judge them on the actors - after all, you can only be as funny as the script in front of you. The omens for Step Brothers were really good - the behind the scenes team could count Anchorman, Talledega Nights, and Semi Pro between them.
Thankfully, Step Brothers more than delivered on its promising credentials. I cannot remember laughing for so long as so hard at a film for a long time. It wasn't a case of having a quick laugh at a funny joke, I was physically crying with laughter at entire scenes in this film.
What makes this film so brilliant is that it is so very, very simple. There are no fantastical plot lines, no outrageous situations designed to generate a cheap laugh. The simplicity of having two 40yr old men acting like 10 yr old children provides so many opportunities for gags the laughs seemingly never stop. For this reason, the sheer immaturity of the film is massively endearing. All the things I used to do with my brother 10 years ago (I say 10 years ago, I still do it now) that I found funny then (and now) are in this film, and it appealed to me instantly.
Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are simply fantastic. From the opening salvo, the two have a chemistry that is so often missing in films like this. They bicker as if they actually were brothers, and with the amount of comic ability shared between them, proceed to create moments that even a German would find amusing.
It's difficult to think what else to write to be honest. There are simply too many moments of comic genius to try and list in this review, and at the same time I don't want to give anything away. My advice is simple - if you want a laugh, go and see this film - and if you don't find it funny, then book an appointment with your GP, because I fear that you're in the middle of a sense of humour failure.
