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Step Brothers

Boys will be boys – and so will grown men, apparently. In Adam McKay’s first film since Talledega Nights, Will Ferrell and John C Reilly get back in touch with their inner child as two spoiled brats who are still living with their respective parents well into middle age.

Ferrell is Brennan Huff, a 40-year-old virgin (probably) whose mom, Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) has given up hope of ejecting him from her life. Reilly is Dale (“Call me Dragon”) Doback, the equally immature son of Dr Robert Doback (Richard Jenkins). When Nancy and Robert tie the knot, the new siblings are forced to share a bedroom – an arrangement that doesn’t suit either one of these arrested adolescents.

Lips are pursed. Insults muttered. Threats issued. Blows thrown. These guys hate each other. That is, until Dale gets a load of Bren’s super confident little brother, Derek (Adam Scott), married, wealthy, and an instant favourite with Dr Doback. If anyone can unite Bren and Dale, it’s the nauseatingly grown up Derek.

On the face of it a bog standard Dumb and Dumber-style comedy, Step Brothers is that in spades, but at the same time its humour is rooted in distinctly painful family ructions. Anyone who has experienced life with step siblings or step kids will recognise the emotional minefield involved.

Ferrell and Reilly don’t hold anything back. This is a film about childishness, and they rub our faces in it. Adolescence is a dangerous, mixed up period, when all kinds of unsavoury impulses can surface. In a variation on the obligatory Will Ferrell nude scene, Bren pulls his pants down and rubs his scrotum over Dale’s holy of holies – his beloved drum kit. Why? Because it’s there.

While old pros Steenburgen and Jenkins sketch in enough detail to suggest where the family dynamics have gone awry (and with enough sympathy that we understand why the step-brothers would fight to save their marriage), the film never makes the mistake of taking itself too seriously. The laughs come thick and fast as the boys foil various adult strategies to find them gainful employment and sell the house out from under them.

It’s only when they’re compelled to put aside childish things and earn their keep – as all of us must, eventually – that things go a little slack. But this is just a temporary blip. A gloriously improbable happy ending underlines that there is still one line of work where you never do have to grow up. That would be showbiz– and Step Brothers is certainly the proof of it. Where else are you going to see two middle-aged millionaire movie stars beating up on a schoolyard full of pre-teens?

Tom Charity
tom.charty@lovefilm.com

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