Step Brothers.

"I haven't seen much at the movies in the past two years that has given me as much unbridled comic pleasure as the sight of Will Ferrell as the win-at-any-cost NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby, calling on Jesus, Tom Cruise and Oprah Winfrey to put out the psychosomatic flames engulfing his body in director Adam McKay's 2006 Talladega Nights," writes the LA Weekly's Scott Foundas. "Until, that is, I saw Ferrell's Brennan Huff - a 39-year-old, live-at-home mama's boy with dreams of a professional singing career - belt out a heartfelt rendition of Bonnie Raitt's 'Something to Talk About' midway through the new Ferrell-McKay collaboration, Step Brothers."

Updated through 7/26.

"When it takes off into bizarre realms, the film most confidently finds its goofy groove, as well as most vigorously (and good-naturedly) mocks the boys-just-want-to-stay-boys genre that [Judd] Apatow has made his lucrative own," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "Which is to say that McKay and Ferrell's latest generally succeeds at having its cake and devouring it too, mining juvenile behavior for inane laughs while also, via a coda involving beating the shit out of schoolyard punks, ridiculing stories wherein immaturity must eventually be discarded for adulthood."

"What's distinct about the recent cycle of comic juvenilia are its contemporary contours - male camaraderie and self-actualization combined with raunchy guffaws and a preoccupation with women that doesn't extend to giving them interesting roles - and the ease with which its prominent practitioners are willing to recycle their own laughs to increasingly diminished ends," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times.

"I almost never laugh at characters who whack each other on the head," writes Stephanie Zacharek in Salon. "But for some inexplicable reason (and are there ever explicable reasons why comedy works?), it cracked me up in Step Brothers, maybe because Ferrell and [John C] Reilly always look a little like they've just been whacked on the head, anyway.... Stupid, crude and hilarious, Step Brothers works by sneaking past our better judgment: I don't know why the sight of Reilly, aggressively chattering at his dignified doctor-father while dressed in a faded Bahamas T-shirt and Kelly green Underoos, is funny. It just is."

"Well, now we know why the trailers for Step Brothers were so dispiriting - the movie actually has lots of laughs, but almost all of them come from places too obscene and outrageous to include in the average coming attraction," writes Alonso Duralde for MSNBC. "Step Brothers is, ultimately, an R-rated comedy for 12-year-olds. But if you've remained in touch with what makes your inner 12-year-old have a filthy giggle, you'll have fun with it."

"[W]ithout a viable satirical element, all the film leaves us is the quality of its gags," writes Neil Morris in the Independent Weekly. "Unfortunately, they do not rise above the level of a post-Weekend Update Saturday Night Live sketch."

"One of the elements that separates Step Brothers from other arrested-development comedies also happens to be what makes it worse," argues Scott Tobias at the AV Club: "Ferrell and Reilly aren't adolescents refusing to cross the threshold into adulthood, they're more like petulant 10-year-olds given to bunkbeds, treehouses, and temper tantrums."

"Sometimes I think I am living in a nightmare," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "All about me, standards are collapsing, manners are evaporating, people show no respect for themselves. I am not a moralistic nut. I'm proud of the X-rated movie I once wrote. I like vulgarity if it's funny or serves a purpose. But what is going on here?"

At the SpoutBlog, Christopher Campbell lists "10 Great Movies About Brothers."

Update: "[M]uch of the raillery in Step Brothers seems lazy or desperate" to Time's Richard Corliss: "The Ferrell character lacks the goofy appeal of Ricky Bobby or the skater in Blades of Glory. And I'll take the comedy stylings of Jon Heder over Reilly's drabber improvisations any day."

Updates, 7/26: Mike Russell finds it "only fairly amusing - with a couple of inspired minor characters and nary a gag or wacky wrestling match that can't wait for DVD. Frankly, the whole thing feels like a coast."

On the other hand, Paul Matwychuk: "I can't help it - I'm a sucker for this stuff."

Posted by dwhudson at July 25, 2008 11:12 AM