Let’s just lay this out from the get-go: if you don’t like Will Ferrell’s comedy, you will not like this movie.  I, for one, happen to think that he is hilarious.  He’s in a handful of movies that I love to watch again and again and again.  And when I saw the trailer for  Step Brothers, I was quite eager to see it.

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures

The movie re-unites Ferrell with fellow Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby writer and director Adam McKay, and fellow actor John C. Reilly.  Step Brothers is the story of Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (Reilly), two 40 year-olds who have never left home or had anything resembling adult lives.  By happenstance, Brennan’s mom Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) and Dale’s dad Robert (Richard Jenkins) meet at a convention and wind-up getting married.  Just that quickly.

Brennan and Nancy move in with Robert and Dale and the two boys begin their territorial battle for domination of their shared bedroom.  After some very childish pranks pulled on each other, they realize how much they have in common and become fast allies in their various bizarre quests throughout the movie. 

Like I said before, if you don’t like Ferrell’s comedy, then you won’t like this movie.  Especially because the writing is not nearly as strong as even in Talladega Nights, but certainly not as in say Old School or other comparable comedies.  The movie relies heavily on physical gags, fart jokes, and vulgarity to get its laughs.

Now, to address the cruelty.  Our fearless editor-in-chief blogged earlier this week that the meanness in movies such as this is a little overboard and even a little unnerving.  He contrasts the cruelty in this film to the new Get Smart, starring Steve Carrell, which instead of inflicting cruelty, attempts the deflect it.  He cited Roger Ebert’s review of Step Brothers in which Ebert laments that “…it lowers the civility of our civilization.”  Pretty harsh.  He goes even further and states, “Sometimes I think I am living in a nightmare. All about me, standards are collapsing, manners are evaporating, people show no respect for themselves.”

It’s hard not to partly agree with Ebert’s feeling on this and he does make a good point.  That point is that vulgarity is okay as long as it serves some purpose.  Blazing Saddles comes to mind.  And it seems that his beef is with the fact that these movies can get away with vulagarity as only shock value and cheap jokes and other smarter comedies fail or fail to even be produced.  When it comes to Step Brothers, I honestly can’t say that he is wrong. 

However, I think he might be going a little too far.  To say that he feels unclean after having seen it and, were he not required to go to such events, that he would avoid such movies in the future, is fair.  To say that our moral fiber is failing and our civilization is collapsing is a little dramatic.  The thing is, these kinds of movies won’t last.  They are a relatively new breed and their sheer novelty makes them appealing.  Every once in a while they’ll pop up and make some money, but I think that people yearn for more universal comedy.  Smart comedy.  And those films will be produced, and Ebert’s faith will likely be restored in humanity.

In contrast to Ebert’s lament about Step Brothers, MaryAnn Johanson, praises what she feels is its positive significance:

Holy Santa Claus shit, it might be the smallest sign of the hint of a beginning of a reversal of our ongoing cultural apocalypse. Finally, here is a movie that satirizes the trend that’s all the rage now: men wallowing in adolescence through their 30s. This is special because half the other movies we’ve been assaulted with over the last few years have actually seemed to celebrate that horror (see: the oeuvre of Seth Rogen).

I may be the only person in the world to believe that both Ebert and Johanson could, at the same time, be right.  In short, it seems a small matter of perspective.  Ebert is not disputing the content of the story, just its method of telling.  But Johanson says that the telling is instrumental to the argument.

Here’s the unique thing about this funny, funny flick: it holds up Brennan and Dale as objects of ridicule of their own making, not just random schlubs we’re supposed to feel sorry for because they’re being subjected to ongoing onscreen humiliation — it wouldn’t be possible to humiliate Brennan and Dale, in fact, because they have no shame.

By this line of reasoning, she puts Ebert to task because the vulgarity does serve a purpose.  And its extremity in the movie is especially necessary to clarify this purpose.  She may be right, but I think she’s giving too much credit to filmmakers.  Any statement made in the movie is purely accidental.  The original script may have started out differently, but what Johanson saw is not what I saw.  Like I said, if the movie does what she says it does, it seems unintentional.

Personally, I don’t think the movie is important enough for either argument.  It’s just for money.  The movie was vulgar for its own sake and if you don’t like that sort of thing. I wouldn’t go if you’re over forty, though, unless you still live with your parents and can empathize with the main characters.  However, if you are childish and like Will Ferrell’s comedy, this may be your thing.  I happen to lay somewhere in between and just ended up laughing a lot.  From that perspective, it was certainly worth seeing to me.  I’m just not sure if I should have paid twenty bucks to do so.