Growing Pains

Trying to catch up on the glut of summer comedies I have yet to see, I saw Step Brothers earlier today; the new Will Ferrell that once again has him teamed up with his Talledega Nights co-star, John C. Reilly. As you can surmise by the title, the two comics play step-brothers, who both still live at home with their parents and try to find ways to deal with each other.

The film ends up living and dying by this premise. Seeing Ferrell and Reilly playing the epitome of the man-child produces some truly funny moments. However, it also take the film down a road that it can't seem to navigate. Once it's been established that these two are overgrown versions of unruly children, there's only two basic outcomes. Either they remain these immature boobs or they grow up and mature. Since having them remain childish doesn't lend itself to any sort of natural conflict, the filmmaker naturally opted to have them try to grow in some way. Unfortunately, the film doesn't really pay off that eventual outcome either comedically or from a story perspective.

I began to wonder what point they were trying to make with this movie. Ferrell and Reilly's performance as the brothers is so over the top that it takes it beyond simply looking at the concept of arrested development; a theme which has been covered extensively in recent comedies. These two truly act as if they are children, which their out-of-breath delivery and their overusage of superlatives. It seemed at times if they were almost trying to do some sort of conceptual piece that was making a commentary on the unruly nature of today's children. But I think that would be giving the film too much credit.

The film introduces a lot of potentially interesting side stories, but never really does anything with them except use them for comedic purposes. For example, more could have been done with the parents, played by Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins. It could have explored what it's like for people who are ready to retire, yet are forced to still play the role of parent. Instead, they're there just to yell and look exasperated. There is another blood brother who's used to create some conflict, but it's never done in a very natural way.

Ultimately, it feels as if this film couldn't give the audience enough credit. I would have loved if they would have spent more time developing a story and making us understand these characters instead of trying to take every plot device and somehow turn it into a joke. With the way this film was produces, it made you feel as if these two characters were originally created in an SNL skit and they tried to stretch the concept into a 90 minute film. At times, there are naturally going to be genuinely funny moments, but in terms of narrative, everything is just a mess.

With the speed with which this and Semi-Pro came out this year, it appears that these films were not given the care and time they deserved. Both films had solid premises, but were put together in a slap-dash manner that hurt their overall quality. The time spent making both of these should have been combined to make one really good film. And speaking of low-quality, this film has a cheap, gritty look to it that I wasn't overly crazy about. It did seem to be for stylistic reasons, so I'm not sure why it was made that way.

Does Step Brothers have some high quality laughs? Sure. And I will admit, after not caring for most of John C. Reilly's work, he's enjoyable here and clearly enjoys playing off of Ferrell. However, at the end of the day, I need something more that just cheap laughs from a Will Ferrell film. He's made too many good films for me to accept subpar material. When this is what they offer, I would be just as happy and entertained with watching Anchorman for the 50,000th time. Will, call me when you've made a film that makes me laugh and also has a cohesive story strung throughout. Then we'll be back in business. Grade: C+