Step Brothers

Starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly
Directed by Adam McKay
Rated R

Each approach has its merits, although dumb comedies almost always produce bigger laughs and higher ticket sales. There’s a reason people still buy Three Stooges memorabilia, after all: Because at the end of the day, most people just want to see a comedy that can make them laugh and help them forget the reasons they needed to laugh before they walked into the theater.

If that’s the only legitimate litmus, particularly for a comedy that makes no effort to be anything but a dumb comedy, then Step Brothers is a rousing success. Likely the most adolescent film since Happy Gilmore, Step Brothers is proudly and unwaveringly stupid, a 100-minute exercise in reckless, childish behavior that should never be condoned by 10-year-olds, let alone guys in their 40s.

Dr. Robert Doback (Richard Jenkins) meets Nancy Huff (Mary Steenburgen) at a conference and they instantly fall in love. After a whirlwind relationship and their wedding, Nancy and her son Brennan (Ferrell) move into the Doback home with Robert and his son Dale (John C. Reilly). Each step brother instantly hates the other, with Brennan at one point threatening to beat Dale with a pillowcase loaded with bars of soap while he sleeps. The “boys” get in fights against each other as well as a throng of neighborhood bullies, the oldest of which may be 11 or 12.

We realize what Brennan and Dale do not, namely, that they’re exactly alike. They both live with their parents, never had a real job, sleepwalk, and amble through life with very little misfortune because they’ve been coddled and encouraged every step of the way. Naturally, they soon become best friends.

Eventually, however, they have to grow up. Step Brothers can’t just exist by showing Ferrell and Reilly building poorly-constructed bunk beds and practicing karate on pumpkins in the garage. It tries, of course, and draws out these Baby Hueys as long as it can. But Ferrell and Adam McKay (who also directed and co-wrote Talladega Nights and Anchorman with his former Saturday Night Live colleague) throw a tiny wrinkle in at just the right time so that Dale and Brennan have to find jobs and stop embarrassing themselves and others with their immaturity.

The smartest thing in this movie is the casting of Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins, who was so wonderful earlier this year in The Visitor. They’re anchors to all of this madness, far more sympathetic and relatable than Ferrell and Reilly. Without them, this would just be too far over the top.

Ferrell and Reilly, as we know by now, work well together. When they first paired up for Talladega Nights, it was an unlikely duo; Ferrell has always been a manchild in his broadest comedies, and Reilly was an Oscar nominee with a history of great, lonesome loser supporting roles. Their antics, surprisingly, don’t get old in Step Brothers, because both actors are so gleefully committed to them and perhaps because this movie is almost self-parody..

Don’t mistake this for Annie Hall. Don’t look for a lot of meaning. Or any meaning, really. Just watch Step Brothers and laugh. And mark another one down in the column of dumb comedies.