Monday, July 28, 2008

Step Brothers (*1/2)

STEP BROTHERS
Directed by Adam McKay



*1/2

The problem with most mainstream comedies these days--the reason why most of them seem anything but funny--is because they simply don't make the effort to tell adequate jokes. They depend mostly on sight gags, which in any situation outside of a Hollywood movie set would be horrifying and explicit. Step Brothers, the newest of these types of films, should get credit for taking this theory to the extreme. It does not try to insult the audience, but it unfortunately puts more responsibility on shock, and less on saying something funny.

The film stars Will Farrell and John C. Reily, who have suddenly become a comic duo film producers feel they can depend on. Farrell is Brennan, a 39-year-old brat, with a wicked temper, who still lives with his mother Nancy (Mary Steenburgen), spending most of his time eating nachos with cheese and masturbating to exercise videos. Reily is Dale, he's 40, is of similar temperament, and lives off of his successful businessman dad Robert (Richard Jenkins). Nancy and Robert meet, fall in love, and now the overgrown babies have become unwelcome step brothers.

Brennan and Dale hate each other, and this brings a rift to their parents' marriage. But then, realizing that they are both on the same level of loser as each other, they instantly become best friends, which ironically causes more headaches for their parents. After they botch job interviews that Richard had set up for them, their parents decide that if they don't go out and get their own lives, they will be thrown out on the streets and forced to fend for themselves.

This story doesn't really go in many directions. Numerous scenes are meant to show Dale and Brennan as middle-aged mongoloids, but the filmmakers decide that this alone is funny. Most of this film's laughs comes from its creative one-liners, but these come few and far between other scenes of licking old dog feces and male genitalia being rubbed all over a drum set. The film also displays extreme violence, mostly at the expense of those of which Brennan and Dale feel they must showcase their power over the normal world.

Which brings me to Will Farrell. There was once a time when he was a creative comedian who excelled at brilliant improvisation in small cameo roles. Now, as his film career has expanded, we have come to see that he has become a victim of self-parody. There is not a whole lot of difference between Ron Bergundy or Ricky Bobby, and though both Anchorman and Talledegha Nights are both pretty funny movies, the one thing I've noticed through all of his films is that none of them are as funny as his golden years on "Saturday Night Live".

To be fair, Brennan is not a carbon-copy stock character like the rest, and in fact is essentially a reinvention for Farrell, becoming more angry, more crude, and a lot more tasteless. But in a way, it's a lot more disappointing than progressive, because Farrell spends less time working his improvisational magic, and more time pushing envelopes that should be sealed shut. It's something that is sure to thrill audiences, but people go into a film like Step Brothers to laugh, not cringe.

What is so frustrating in the film is how the talent far outweighs the finished product. Reily is just as aimless as Farrell in his performance (didn't this guy get nominated for an Oscar six years ago? Since when has he become a comedic sidekick?). Steenburgen mails it in, while Jenkins overdoes his seemingly simple character. In a way, its the parent characters that are the most puzzling, mostly because of their "wait-and-scream" reactions to all of the shenanigans that their two boys do.

There are moments of true humor--mostly in scenes where it is just Farrell and Reilly simply interacting with each other, but it's hard to see two truly talented actors settle for a mediocre screenplay (Farrell actually co-penned the script with director Adam McKay). I don't see the film taking on The Dark Knight in the box office in its first weekend, but there will definitely be an audience. It's considered another piece of the "Frat Pack" films (a phrase I still don't understand, because no one actor other than Farrell seems committed to it), and their's always an audience for something this uproarious.

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