In the petri dish of American film comedy, Step Brothers represents a mutant combination of two previously separate strains: the chaotic man-child romp, whose past master is Adam Sandler, and the profane-coming-of-age story, lately patented by Judd Apatow (who co-produced). The experiment is not a success, though we might have had a better test case if somebody had bothered with a script, instead of relying so obviously heavily on improv. (Director Adam McKay, the occasional genius of Talladega Nights notwithstanding, is the lazy man’s Christopher Guest.) It does push both tendencies to new, potentially interesting extremes: Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly seem not just simple but borderline autistic, and their advanced ages make their condition seem a lot more tragic than Seth Rogen’s (or Sandler’s, who was ten years younger when he made the very similar, vastly superior Billy Madison). Ultimately, though, Step Brothers is a freak show, closer to Lars Von Trier’s The Idiots or something by Werner Herzog than its obvious American models. And I’ve got to hope it serves as a wake-up call for Ferrell, who’s beginning to look like a sad old gorilla who suspects he might have been destined for something better than hurling his feces at spectators. Back to the lab!
by Evan Kindley | Source: 35mm print
27 Jul 2008 3:01 PM | Submit Comment
