Step Brothers (2008)
My thanks to Pinko Punko for pointing out what should have been obvious. Plot points are discussed.
The post-post-post-adolescent pandering that’s currently obligatory in anything sporting Judd Apatow’s name in any capacity (where has the man who was once involved with Freaks and Geeks and The Larry Sanders Show gone?) has been allowed to reach inhuman extremes in Step Brothers. Our quick-fixing, instant-dieting, immediate-downloading, big-explosioning society, with its faux self-affirmation and growing population of man-babies who watch (as the cliché goes) too many 1970s sitcoms, and eat cereal by the box, and generally refuse to leave their parents’ house, begs for satire. I would even settle for a wink - but Step Brothers is just the usual depressingly mean squandering of promising resources.
I expected more of Adam McKay, the director of Anchorman and Talladega Nights. McKay’s previous pictures are uneven, but they, at their best, flip We-Are-America self-entitlement into a nakedly aggressive dada nightmare. Big please-the-masses routines are punctuated with surprisingly volcanic explosions of nastiness, but McKay, in his first two pictures at least - had perspective: these buffoons were eating one another alive - and we’re here, as usual, not just to tolerate but celebrate it. Anchorman was primarily concerned with being silly, and it worked; Talladega Nights was more ambitious (and people, of course, didn’t like it as much) and had moments of jarring hostility; particularly a near-brilliant dinner scene that plays like a cross between SNL and David Lynch and Tennessee Williams on peyote.
To grasp the tone of McKay and Will Ferrell’s (who co-writes their pictures) Step Brothers, take that dinner scene from Talladega Nights, crank up the volume to 13 (forget 11), drain of all knowingness, and play for ninety-some minutes without relief. Some people will love this picture, and they are welcome to it, but it had me yearning for the subtle, intricate human comedy of Old School by comparison. Truthfully, Step Brothers isn’t any better or worse than any other ten movies like it, but this cast and crew is too talented to accept such blankly cynical, lazy mediocrity from.
Step Brothers merits little discussion, but I will say that I wondered, yet again, why we’re so terrified of sex and affection and vulnerability in comedies that are pitched to the mainstream. There’s a subplot involving the wife of Ferrell’s blood brother (played by the beautiful Kathryn Hahn - who makes an impression despite the material), who falls for John C. Reilly, the other stunted step-brother of the title. This development could’ve taken the film in interesting directions, and could’ve more logically explained why the new volatile family unit might not make it, but it’s played in the usual manic, broad beats. The wife isn’t allowed to be human - she’s a virgin’s idea of the Glenn Close character from Fatal Attraction. There is a sex scene between Reilly and the wife that could’ve been perceptive and sad - but, well, you know how it goes.
Step Brothers could probably be written off as just another picture that features people getting kicked in the balls for the near entirety of the running time, but there’s a third act development that troubled me. Ferrell and Reilly eventually reform themselves (reduced, in typical Apatow shorthand, to a montage; this was also an issue with Knocked Up) but are soon encouraged by their parents (Richard Jenkins and Mary Steenburgen) to embrace their old ways. The old ways, you see, the ways that nurtured unemployment, ignorance and behavior that could be, with limited imagination, classified as homicidal, were actually symbolic of the step brothers’ freedom and individuality.
The friction, the film asks us to believe, is primarily Jenkins’ fault; he’s just a fuddy-duddy who works and loves his wife and prizes responsibility and ambition. I’m tired of these pictures that mindlessly equate success with loss of soul; that are designed to blatantly appeal to the fantasies of the frustrated middle class youth. And I felt bad for Jenkins and Steenburgen, two wonderful actors of rare generosity of feeling who do what they can. (Steenburgen’s presence only further caused me to wonder, in one of the film’s many dead spots, what Jonathan Demme might have done with similar material twenty years ago.) And I, perhaps indulgently, felt bad for myself. Paying for a midnight show, I fed the machine of hypocritical self-congratulation yet again.
★½
July 26th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Snuck into this today after an obligatory screening of X-Files. One genuine laugh (yes Will Farrell’s threatened assault on a certain musical instrument and then the follow through made me laugh), a couple of chuckles and about an hour and twenty minutes of irritation that these people seemed so pleased with themselves. Even for free, I regretted the waste of time.
My only argument with your review is that I think you’re overrating the McKay/Ferrell combo and reading too much genius into Talladega Nights (scattered, sloppy and only sporadically funny), but that’s just me.
I like Will Ferrell but two of the worst movies I’ve seen this year were his. I also hated the basketball one.
And since we’re on the subject of the whole Apatow crowd, I’m fully prepared to hate Pineapple Express.
Sorry, I’m cranky. It was a genuinely dispiriting afternoon at the multiplex. I had big plans to catch up on at least 3 wide releases but could only stomach the first two.
X-files wasn’t bad, it was just pointless. Shame on me for not assuming that from the start.
July 27th, 2008 at 5:48 am
I would agree with Craig - I thought Talladega was as much of a mess as this film was, it just wasn’t as nasty about it. All of the profanity ended up feeling like a toilet snake for my soul…I was physically exhausted by the end of the film. Hearing Steenburgen being forced to scream out “F*cking f*ck” was a particularly low point.
It is interesting that you mention the dinner table scene in Talladega. I skimmed the production notes, and in it McKay says that the entire concept of Step Brothers sprung from that one scene.
I also think it’s fantastic that you haven’t included any of the usual plot synopsis/breakdowns in your review here, Chuck. I move towards that aesthetic in my own writing, but it’s nice to see other critics ditching what has become a useless (given our media saturated age) paragraph in reviews. The really awful critics do nothing but synopsize, but that’s a discussion for another time.
July 27th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Chuck-o, Craig and I are having a contest to see who can write the shortest review of this movie and obviously you’re not playing along. Where’d all these words come from? Boo to you!
July 29th, 2008 at 8:25 am
In general, I think Talladega Nights is just ok, but there were moments, including the scene I mentioned, that appeared to be pointing toward some sort of new meta-satire of that audience that would be most drawn to it. In Step Brothers, McKay backs away from that entirely, and it does lead me to believe that I may have just talked myself into it all along.
Thanks for the shout-out Evan, I’m not much for critics who write book reports either, I try to only really get into the plot when the plot’s construction is a fundamental issue (as in DARK KNIGHT). Step Brothers’ plot was easy to avoid, because it doesn’t have one.
K-I saw those reviews, and that was tempting, but this movie irritated me, and got more words than it most likely deserved. Step Brothers is one of those pictures that tempts you to consider that our country’s culture really might be as awful as some claim. (Watching FOX can have the same effect.)