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).
The film’s mentality of hitting you with joke after joke after joke for its first 70 minutes or so starts to run out of steam at that point. With the exception of the very ending, which is in and of itself a bit too much of a generic comedy ending which we’ve seen a thousand times before, the last 20 minutes has fewer of the laughs which made the movie up to that point so enjoyable. It’s inevitable that a comedy has to draw to its closing by tying loose ends up but in this case in doing so the laugh meter suffers. It’s in this respect that Step Brothers loses some points on my scale, even if as a whole package I really did like it.
One of the great things about Step Brothers, probably the best of things actually, is that Ferrell and Reilly are equals. It’s not like the usual stuff where Ferrell takes centre stage and the other actors around him are just there to set up his jokes. This is as much Reilly’s film as it is Ferrell’s, and it’s in the way they play off of one another that’s not only the funniest thing but the value of the film. Having said that, they are supported very well by the likes of Richard Jenkins (who’s just great in practically everything), Mary Steenburgen, and a particularly funny performance is put in by Adam Scott as Ferrell’s annoying, self-centred younger brother. I can’t say there’s a weak link in the cast, possibly because they are not in the limelight enough to detract from the two leads.
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