No doubt about it, the funny have fallen this summer
— and it’s no laughing matter. Despite the presence of proven
high-profile talent at the movies this season, there’s yet to be a
successful comedy to grace the silver screen. Adam Sandler stumbled with
the confused You Don’t Mess with the
Zohan, Mike Myers recycled old bits in the
unsuccessful Love Guru, and Eddie Murphy cranked out another embarrassment with Meet Dave.
So to describe Adam McKay’s Step Brothers as the best comedy of
the year isn’t saying much. Reuniting Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly
from Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky
Bobby, this film features a plot as thin as a
contact lens and a comedic premise that begins to fray at the 30-minute
mark. Sure, there are some big laughs in the movie — how can there
not be with so much comedic talent on board? — but you can’t
help but notice that everyone involved is coasting.
Dr. Richard Doback (Richard Jenkins) and Nancy Huff
(Mary Steenburgen) are sixtysomethings about to enter their golden years
when they unexpectedly meet and fall in love. They have a great many things
in common, one of them being the fact that they both have middle-aged sons
living at home. Richard’s spawn, Dale (Reilly), is a wily freeloader
who uses guilt to convince his dad that he should do nothing more than play
Guitar Hero and eat pizza every day. Nancy’s son Brennan (Ferrell)
isn’t much better. Traumatized by his brother while in high school,
he refuses to venture far from his mother, who allows him to do nothing but
wear retro T-shirts and pleasure himself while watching daytime TV.
The good life for these two slackers comes to abrupt
end when their parents get married and they’re forced to share a
room. Bitter enemies at first, they soon bond when they discover, among
other banal commonalities, that they would both sleep with John Stamos if
they were women. They decide they’ll be best friends, until their
parents tell them that they must find jobs and move out within 30 days.
The movie is nothing more than an excuse for its
stars to run through a litany of childish skits and antics, some
successful, some not. The lengths to which Dale and Brennan go to upset
each other, especially those involving a cherished drum set, are
wonderfully crude and effective, as are the moments when they go out of
their way to sabotage each other’s job interviews. However, the
shtick wears thin quickly.
I’m sure that Ferrell and Reilly had a great
time on the film; their goofiness is infectious and makes some of the
material work that otherwise wouldn’t. Jenkins and Steenburgen
aren’t given much to do, but the veteran actress scores the funniest
line I’ve heard in a movie all year. As Derek, Brennan’s
self-centered brother, Adam Scott is wonderfully self-absorbed, and Kathryn
Hahn, as his long-suffering wife, steals every scene she’s in.
This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2008.
