Step Brothers: Critic Reviews

Step Brothers is hit-and-miss, but it made me wish that the usual American comedy of 'how stupid can we get?' had this much rage.

Noisy, fitfully amusing, ultimately tiresome havoc.

This goofy comedy is a DVD rental only.

The concept is inherently funny, but the plot grows thin and the laughs grow fewer once the premise is established.

Thank god that when he became a man, Will Ferrell never put away childish things. His Step Brothers is so childish it seems to arrive in diapers, and that's not bad; it's good.

Has one joke that it beats into the ground: 40-year-old men acting like petulant 9-year-olds. Luckily, Ferrell and Reilly were born with no shame or sense of personal dignity, and they give good tantrum.

Watching people act like kids is annoying. Now everyone can join in the un-fun with Step Brothers, Will Ferrell's latest summed-up-in-one-line concept comedy that tests our patience so much more than his previous movies did.

There's a good subject for satire here, the extended adolescence of American kids. But satire presupposes maturity, or at least some perspective.

The engine that drives this flick is the chemistry between Mr. Reilly and Mr. Ferrell. The two obviously delight in each other's company, and it feels good and is funny to watch.

The unraveling isn't as smartly written as the setup. And because the characters beyond the parents and boys aren't as finely tuned, the film starts to lag.

When did comedies get so mean? Step Brothers has a premise that might have produced a good time at the movies, but when I left, I felt a little unclean.

The trick to the Men II Boyz comic genre -- where grown men are simply older, pudgier versions of their teen selves, struggling to find their place in the world -- is to find the surprises and payoffs within the Peter Pan syndrome.

Ferrell and Reilly get more mileage out of juvenile pouting and bickering than any other performers I can imagine, but that's about as far as this goes.

Full of riffy, improvised moments and a couple of jaw-droppingly raunchy sight gags, the comedy follows a typical buddy-movie arc -- conflict and loathing giving way to bonding and brotherhood, or step-brotherhood in this case.

There is no plot, no sense, symmetry or structure to this train wreck.

Do not go to Step Brothers looking for anything remotely meaningful, sincere or spiritually enhancing. Go for a laugh. It's got plenty of them.

Step Brothers is stupid. Childish. Moronic. Simple. Juvenile. Silly. Just ridiculous. Man, is it funny.

Seesawing from the gleefully stupid to the desperately stupid, Step Brothers is an indicator that the Judd Apatow juggernaut has made one too many trips to the well.

I thought I knew funny, but I was mistaken. Before the blessed light of Step Brothers entered my life, I knew not the sweet comedic splendors of live burial, bunk-bed catastrophe or a minivan family singing 'Sweet Child O' Mine' in four-part harmony.

It's not subtle, not the cleverest thing Apatow has put his name on. But for lowdown, cheap and dirty laughs, it's pretty hard to beat Reilly and Ferrell, riffing, trashing and trash-talking each other for 94 mostly mean, sometimes manic minutes.

A movie of unrelenting idiocy featuring boorish behaviour, unrealistic character development and ludicrous plotting.

A meagre, occasionally funny affair.

Stupid, crude and hilarious, Step Brothers works by sneaking past our better judgment.

Few films are worse to sit through than comedies that don't work. Step Brothers is one of those.

Exhausted is how many audiences members will feel after squirming through such a repetitive, one-joke comedy.