Step Brothers

Will Ferrell stars as Brennan – a 39-year old man/child who still lives at home with his mother, Nancy (Mary Steenburgen). After losing his job at PetSmart, Brennan is in for another big surprise. Nancy is getting married to Robert (Richard Jenkins), and, shockingly enough, Robert has a 40-year old man/child still living at home with him, Dale (John C. Reilly).

Can the two step brothers get along? Will they grow up and get out of the house?

Step Brothers relies too much on familiar material and formula, but still makes you laugh enough to make it worth it, particularly the early scenes featuring familial tensions and sibling rivalry that will make you think Nancy and Robert should just call Dr. Phil before it is too late. Frequent collaborating writers Adam McKay and Ferrell pepper the dialogue with Ferrell’s trademark hyperbolic responses and exclamations (used best in Anchorman, “Great Odin’s Raven!”), while trying too hard to awkwardly insert curse words to get the movie’s rating up to an R instead of a PG-13.

Sometimes, it works as you realize Dale and Brennan are supposed to be acting like they are 4-years old and 3-years old, so they have a limited vocabulary and ability to shock you into paying attention to them without some coarse language, but it grows old, especially when you know something more imaginative and funny could have been inserted.

Ultimately, Reilly and Ferrell take the average material and elevate it to funny with their ability to be as silly as possible without regard to shame or embarrassment. Reilly is even better than Ferrell during most parts of Step Brothers as he becomes the menacing older brother harassing the younger, more vulnerable Brennan. Even when you can predict most of the jokes or watched some of the funniest scenes in commercials and trailers, Ferrell and Reilly save you from boredom by taking it a bit further than you thought the joke would go.

Step Brothers gets slightly repetitive, and the ending doesn’t have quite the wacky madcap conclusion you might want, but you can do much worse if The Dark Knight is sold out again.

Step Brothers is rated R for crude and sexual content, and pervasive language.