Step Brothers film review

certificate_15

STEP BROTHERS

Improvisation is a legitimate method for originating ideas but, based on this example, clearly doesn't provide a solid foundation on which to base a movie. Step Brothers resembles a dot-to-dot drawing, with co-writers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, loosely linking together a series of varyingly absurdist gags. The result is a somewhat bizarre, film in which very little makes sense. This might be considered courageous, inspired filmmaking if the outcome was sufficiently funny, but instead I spent more time scratching my head in bemusement than laughing.

The last time Ferrell, McKay (who also directs proceedings) and John C. Reilly collaborated was on the far more amusing Talladega Nights: the Legend of Ricky Bobby. The result prompted all three to find another project, but this time they deliberately wanted to keep things looser. Invariably with improv, you have to throw an awful lot of spaghetti against the wall before any of it sticks, but far too little of the spaghetti served up here is ready for consumption.

The idea they settled on involves two grown men who still live at home. When their single parents get married, both are forced to share a room. The gawky, sensitive Brennan Huff (Ferrell) and the crude, spoilt Dale Doback (Reilly) suffer from acute arrested development, providing both actors with the opportunity to exhibit their gifts for puerile, adolescent humour. Both obviously enjoy tapping into their inner child as they play the bickering brothers who are constantly winding each other up and generally causing havoc. Their constant feuding eventually causes friction between their newly-wed parents, Brennan's mother Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) and Dale's father Robert (Richard Jenkins).

Brennan and Dale finally find common ground in their dislike for Brennan's conceited and egotistical brother Derek (Adam Scott) whose introduction offers one example of the film's surrealist nature. As he drives with his prim wife (Kathryn Harn) and two precocious young kids, all are singing an elaborately harmonized arrangement of Guns n' Roses' Sweet Child o' Mine. It's one of many scenes that you sense is included solely because it seemed funny at the time. The fact that they have absolutely no connection with the plot is obviously deemed irrelevant.