Will Ferrell’s shtick seems to be getting tired. His ability to garner laughs stopped after Anchorman (which I consider to be his highest cinematic achievement) and all the way through stuff like Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory and Semi-Pro, he has been unable to make me laugh like he used to. But that has stopped for the time being because although Step Brothers shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same sentences as “best comedies ever” or even “best of the year”, with the help of John C. Reilly making up the duo, I am glad to say that a Will Ferrell comedy was able to make me laugh again.
Two spoiled 40-year-old men become extremely competitive stepbrothers after their single parents get married. But soon after competing with each other relentlessly, they realise that they are actually suited to be best friends.
Step Brothers is admittedly a one-note movie. Two 40-year-old virgins… I mean men with parents who look far too young to be so are forced together as stepbrothers. And the film consistently relies on the immaturity that got them into the situation of being fully grown men living with their parents. This is used in countless incidents both at first when the two hate each other, when they're fighting savagely in the back yard, or after they become friends, when they build bunk-beds with horrendous results. And that would be the film’s undoing had it not been for the fact that it’s really funny. Yes, it’s a style of comedy that won’t be suited to all tastes, with probably those in the audience the same age as these two men being the ones who will be straight-faced all the way through, but those who find it funny at all will end up roaring with laughter.
Similar to Adam Sandler’s recent You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, Step Brothers tries everything to get the laughs. But unlike Zohan, this film succeeds (for the most part, anyway) in doing so. From the opening minutes when Ferrell is melting cheese onto nachos in the microwave and Reilly is complaining to his Dad that twenty dollars isn’t enough money for both pizza and chicken wings, I had at least a grin on my face from then on. The comedy is diverse, from slapstick fighting between the two to surprisingly strong language spat out by them when, for example, they are forced to get jobs. It’s juvenile and immature, but that’s the point of the movie. These are two guys who are both pretty pathetic, not because of their situation necessarily but more because of their relentlessly childish behaviour, but also likeable in their idiocy. These are the worst people I’ve actually cared about in a movie in a while.
Unlike other movies done in this way, there is a bit of intelligence behind a lot of gags. Yes the film may resort to fart jokes or the sight of grown men being beaten up by school kids a quarter their age, but when a film can have both that and jokes about things like work and getting older, and can make the combination work well then I’ve got to give credit where credit’s due. Even when the humour is purely infantile it’s still executed in such a way that it’s actually funny, with very little falling flat (a sin which I’ve seen plenty of comedies commit in the last while).
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