Word: steps
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Step Brothers is the latest chapter in Ferrell's exploration of the man who is not nearly as cool as he thinks he is. (That's a figure familiar for decades through Bob Hope and Steve Martin films, and in TV shows like Get Smart.) With a story assist from Reilly, Ferrell wrote the script with Adam McKay, a fellow alumnus of Saturday Night Live and director of two Will winners, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. The new movie also explores the comic notion of man-child that goes back...
...answer is ingenious and unsettling, which is just fine in an anarcho-sentimentalist comedy. But much of the raillery in Step Brothers seems lazy or desperate. 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. (Reilly was way funnier with Ferrell and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show Tuesday night than he is here.) Finally, Ferrell, the Hollywood star most notorious for going naked in his movies, shows off only his belly, and that...
...their wavelength, the functioning world is the one operating on false values. In Step Brothers that world is represented by Brennan's brother Derek (Adam Scott), a preener and underminer whose sabotaging of a Brennan musical performance back in high school was our hero's defining trauma. Now Derek has a couple of kids so impeccable, they hardly appear in the movie, and a wife, Alice (Kathryn Hahn), whose cooped-up loathing of Derek propels her into the loins of a very surprised Dale. But Derek is just here as the villain, and Alice to wean Dale out of babyhood...
...grown women (like the Catherine Keener character in The 40 Year Old Virgin) approaches an Apatow hero, she'll often induce not passion but panic attacks, and need to take the lead, be aggressive, help him learn how to cope in the land beyond his obsessions and fears. (In Step Brothers Alice has that job, and she assumes it with missionary zeal.) Women are the Other to these six-foot kids. Inside, the Apatow movies say, men are really lost boys looking for a Wendy. Or, ever better, another Peter Pan - a rebellious youth who'll never grow...
...achieve that succulent victory, Step Brothers says, is by singing the Andrea Bocelli Por Ti Volare, accompanied by a drum solo. Even a grump has to admit it. That made me laugh...