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London,
Charlotte O'Sullivan's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Adam McKay.
Cast: Will Ferrell, John C Reilly, Mary Steenburgen, Richard Jenkins, Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn
Description: Brennan is 40-years-old going on 14. He still lives at home with his mother Nancy and openly nurtures resentment for his boorish and arrogant younger brother Derek. During a medical convention, Nancy meets Robert, who has his own adult son at home - Dale - and the lonely fifty-somethings embark on a whirlwind romance. Wedding bells peel in record time and Nancy moves in with her new husband with Brennan in tow. The new living arrangements pose a dilemma because for the first time ever, Dale must share his bedroom.
Country: US. 2008. 97mins
Making a splash: Will Ferrell (left) and John C Reilly
Fooling around: much of the film was improvised
Happy family: Brennan and Dale are spoilt child-men
In this Judd Apatow-produced comedy Will Ferrell and John C Reilly play Brennan and Dale, two spoilt, porno-reading, TV-ogling child-men. Well there’s a surprise. Isn’t every US comedy these days about just such a winning type: the immature loser? Apatow is the man responsible for some of the most successful comedies of recent years: The 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad and Knocked Up. Clearly, arrested development is his thing but isn’t it time for us all to move on?
There’s just one problem. Dude, the film so totally happens to be great. Ferrell and Reilly co-wrote the script with director Adam McKay. Which is to say, they pretty much ad-libbed the whole thing and, while some of the jokes fall flat, or outstay their welcome, most possess a crazed energy and astuteness that suggest the team put a lot of thought into this “no-brainer”.
The film begins with a wedding between two successful, good-natured fiftysomethings, Nancy and Robert (the wonderful Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins). This union spells big changes for their respective stay-at-home offspring. Brennan (39) and Dale (40) will now have to share a room and, naturally, they’re not best pleased. Dale is a pugnacious show-off. Brennan is a weeper (watching Dale make Brennan cry on their first evening together is a joy).
These actors obviously know their characters inside and out. We feel like intimates, too. Brennan and Dale are larger-than-life and very familiar: helpless despots, always on the brink of a meltdown. When the step-brothers both start sleepwalking things get really weird; when they kick Robert down the stairs we realise this a screwball farce that knows exactly when and why to get serious.
There is a plot. Brennan’s golden-boy younger brother (think Tom Cruise on Oprah Winfrey) offers to sell the family home so that Robert and Nancy can afford to sail round the world on their beloved yacht. This crisis forces the “bros” to unite and try all sorts of shenanigans, including going for “team” interviews and setting up a business that exploits their hard-to-pinpoint talents.
Step Brothers remains focused, however, on that central tension between the boys and their apparently doting parents. As in Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace, family life is hysterical — that is to say, full of hysteria.
Have Robert and Nancy made their children mad, or are they simply trying to make the best of having mad children? Brennan and Dale swear like troopers and gradually infect their parents (“What the f***ing f***?” yells Nancy).
The film was rated “Restricted” in the US, where the veteran critic Roger Ebert has bemoaned its crudeness. He claims the film “lowers the civility of our civilisation”. But since when has home been sweet? Arthouse films are allowed to show life warts and all. Why not mainstream comedies?
Nor is nastiness per se condoned. Apatow’s brand of humour owes something to the cruel Farrelly brothers but far more to the Weitz siblings, who made the infinitely kind American Pie. There are no gratuitous humiliations (even the horrible brother is spared a ticking-off) and when scores are finally settled, it’s done very much with tongue in cheek. And another thing. I’ve never been convinced by the feisty female heroines in Apatow movies. Luckily, there isn’t one in Step Brothers. Problem solved.
The film is full of cracking one-liners. Plus lots of silly dialogue that, for some reason, makes one glad to be alive (“We’re putting the house on the market,” says Robert brusquely. “Why?” says Brennan, mouth agape. “Is the house haunted?”).
It’s the little visual gags, though, that I suspect I’ll remember — like Brennan’s pyjama top, which shows The Judds. The Judds are a mother and daughter singing duo from the Eighties, family members entwined. No wonder they give Brennan sweet dreams.
Before seeing Step Brothers, I thought I had tired of Ferrell. So perfectly fresh in Elf, he had become ever so slightly ubiquitous. Here, though, his queer, cat-like eyes are full of surprises. And Reilly (who even sounds young in this movie, like a teenage Mark Wahlberg) matches him every step of the way. They’re a winning team.
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