Step Brothers

There's a Blockbuster a block away from my apartment and about once a month they do a four for $20 DVD sale. I am unable to pass this up even though the inevitable time crunch happens and I have stacks of unwatched DVD's sitting around (a good portion of which are some random titles that I picked up to fill up my four). This is one step in a continual effort to get through the monstrosity.

Additional preamble: Event though this film is in my stack I actually watched my buddy's blu-ray copy at his house so this may not technically count as reducing my inventory. Whatever, I'm counting it. My Blog my rules. Suck It.

Will Ferrel is the very definition of a mixed bag for me (wow two reviews in a row where I have a mixed opinion about an actor - shocking I know. You know what I don't have a mixed opinion about? Strawberry scones, nothing equivicable about the goodness of scones). I don't find him inherently funny on his own, and while he's done some films I've enjoyed (Stranger than Fiction, Zoolander), there's also plenty I couldn't stand (Old School, Melinda and Melinda), and a whole bunch I couldn't even bring myself to see (Kicking and Screaming, Bewitched). The overgrown fratboy/blowhard schtick that he seems to run out in 90% of his roles doesn't do much for me, and generally causes me to end up getting bored (I can level the same criticism at Adam Sandler's man child act). Still I think Farrel has the potential to be funny, and the fact that John C. Reilly was in this gave me some hope that the film would be a winner, and I have to say that it was.

Reilly and Ferrel play forty something men, Dale and Brenden, who've never moved out from their single father and mother's houses respectively. Neither of them have ever held any gainful employment, and generally behave like they have the brains of fifteen year old boys (really if this wasn't a comedy you would think these characters were mentally retarded and Farrel and Reilly would be gunning for Oscars) The parents, played by Richard Jenkins and Mary Steenburgen, meet fall in love, and end up moving in together. Brenden and Dale first hate each other, fight a lot, then end up becoming friends which is an even more destructive relationship to those around them. That's the set up and all you really need to know. There's lots of crudity, fighting, slapstick, kids getting beaten up, kids beating adults up, Will Ferrel's scrotum, and Mary Steenburgen cursing (which while enjoyable takes a distance second place to Betty White in Lake Placid in the pantheon of formally staid actresses swearing up a blue streak for my amusement).

One driver of the film's success is that it realizes the inherent ridiculousness of the set up and doesn't try to justify. It doesn't even try that hard to explain why the main characters would still be living at home, and just runs the scenario through more and more outrageous situations, which generally include somebody getting hit (always funny), or Brenden having a ninja sword with Randy Jackson's autograph on the blade.

The film also thankfully buck the recent trend in comedies to have the characters go through some emotional transformation at the end of a film they've spent acting like children and generally non-contributing members of society in some sort of effort to get the audience to feel sympathetic and not disgusted by the character's previous behavior (I call it the Apatow syndrome). I'm all for trying to add depth to a comedy but too often the tonal shifts just feel cheap and kill any comedic momentum the film had going for it. Step Brothers avoids this trap by keeping its meanness level high throughout (its really a pretty twisted film when you sit down and think about it) and having Dale and Brenden learn absolutely nothing and stay pretty much stay in the same state of Arrested Development in which they began the film. This allows the viewer to just enjoy the absurdity of the situation and not have to deal with any unearned dramatic shifts.

The film isn't perfect, several of the jokes fall flat (the sleepwalking gag in particular doesn't work for me), and there are a few points where you have to roll your eyes at some of the absurdity. However, it hits much more than it misses, and has lots of nice touches like a Billy Joel cover band that will only play Joel songs from the late eighties. Ferrel and Reilly play well off of each other and they even caused me to 'like' what are really pretty screwed up characters. Plus the climatic scene involves a Drum Set, Josh Groban, and, while we at "What I'm Watching" tend to avoid the use of gratuitous profanity in our reviews since we find it leads to lazy writing and dilution of the words' impact (and more importantly I'm just not very good at it, seriously some people can paint a tapestry using nothing but the F bomb, I end up sounding like a petulant thirteen year old) I just have to say it: The Fucking Catalina Wine Mixer (just trust me its great)