I guess I feel bad John C. Reilly isn’t taking more… intellectual roles, but they probably don’t pay as well. He’s essentially playing his character from Boogie Nights here, only a little stupider but also a little more self-aware. He’s still great and he’s hilarious, but there is definitely something missing.
But Step Brothers is fantastic. I think I started laughing before the opening titles ended and laughed at the last joke. The wife looked at me like I had a third eyeball as I kept pausing it to wait for my laughter to end.
What’s so great about McKay and Will Ferrell’s script is the intelligence. The jokes aren’t intelligent–that I know Reilly’s running around in a 1997 Return of the Jedi t-shirt is scary, not good–but they way they’re presented, the way the film’s constructed–those are intelligent achievements.
Ferrell and Reilly are about even in the film’s emphasis–neither gets much more screen time than the other–even when one should, when Reilly’s father (Richard Jenkins) abandons him, for instance. Maybe the whole catch of the film is seeing Jenkins, this fantastic character actor, blurt out obscenity after obscenity. It is somehow magical.
The rest of the cast is fantastic–Mary Steenburgen, Kathryn Hahn, especially Adam Scott–and it’s this lowbrow masterpiece. It’s so self-aware, it can’t be anything else.
McKay shot it in Panavision, which is only useful for the opening titles, and makes it feel so… beautifully pretentious.
Pseudo-pretentious.
★★★
CREDITS
Directed by Adam McKay; screenplay by Will Ferrell and McKay, based on a story by Ferrell, McKay and John C. Reilly; director of photography, Oliver Wood; edited by Brent White; music by Jon Brion; production designer, Clayton Hartley; produced by Jimmy Miller and Judd Apatow; released by Columbia Pictures.
Starring Will Ferrell (Brennan Huff), John C. Reilly (Dale Doback), Richard Jenkins (Robert Doback), Mary Steenburgen (Nancy Huff), Adam Scott (Derek Huff) and Kathryn Hahn (Alice Huff).
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