‘Step Brothers’ | 2 stars
By ROBERT W. BUTLER
The Kansas City Star
“Step Brothers” is a one-joke comedy that might have made a decent recurring sketch on “Saturday Night Live,” digested in five-minute doses.
As a feature film it constantly flirts with disaster. The Adam McKay-directed effort dishes nonstop profanity and outrageous grotesqueries and is almost completely senseless.
About all it has going for it is the comic talent of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly — which is just enough for it to squeak by.
They play Brennan and Dale, 40-year-old slackers who still live at home and whose emotional and intellectual development seems to have stalled at age 12. They’ve been sponging off their single parents (Mary Steenburgen, Richard Jenkins), but their easy lives are about to end.
Mom and Dad met at a convention and have gotten married. Now everyone’s moving into one house, and Brennan and Dale must go through the sibling rivalry of a newly blended household.
The idea of grown men acting like pre-adolescents isn’t fresh, but Ferrell and Reilly nail the infantile whining, bratty sullenness and insecurity-driven competitiveness of two boys determined to get their way. For a while it’s funny.
At least until it becomes clear that screenwriters Ferrell and McKay haven’t a clue what to do with their premise. Those who thought Ferrell’s “Semi-Pro” was painfully thin on plot won’t believe this one; compared to “Step Brothers” that basketball flick was War and Peace.
To the extent that it has any kind of story, “Step Brothers” follows Brennan and Dale as their juvenile feuding runs their parents’ marriage onto the rocks. Chastened, they then devote themselves to getting the grown-ups back together and creating an entertainment empire based on Brennan’s singing.
In a couple of digressions along the way, Adam Scott plays Brennan’s brother, Derek, a pompous corporate mover and shaker; Kathryn Hahn is his emotionally abused wife, who inexplicably falls for Dale.
Meanwhile, Brennan falls for his therapist (Andrea Savage), and it’s typical of the film’s loose grasp of reality that she eventually finds him charming.
‘STEP BROTHERS’ ★★
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Richard Jenkins, Mary Steenburgen.
Rated: R for crude and sexual content and pervasive language
Running time: 1:33
@ For Robert W. Butler’s vlog, go to KansasCity.com/movies.
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