Welcome to They Got It Wrong, where I look at a film there was either universally praised or dismissed by critics and argue that the critical consensus for said film is wrong. This week, I look at the 2008 Will Ferrell comedy vehicle Step Brothers.
In this week’s segment of They Got It Wrong, I wanted to finally do a film that was unfairly criticized after using my first two segments to criticize films that were overly praised, and I scoured the recesses of my brain to find films that I loved that were critically panned. I found that unfortunately, the list of movies that I could come up with was rather short (read: nonexistent). I find it much easier to find films that are overly praised because usually when a film is bad, most people agree with the fact that it’s bad. Green Lantern had a 26% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and while I did not outright hate the film, I had no problem with critics who did, because for the most part, their criticisms were correct. So I was struggling to find an under praised film to write about when suddenly, fate reached out and extended its porcelain-skinned hand. I was flipping through channels the other day and wound up watching the beginning of Gangs of New York, and I remembered that John C. Reilly had a small role in the film. As I saw him on screen, in my head, I started thinking about Step Brothers, one of the funniest films of all time, thanks largely to Reilly’s transcendent performance. For some heretofore unknown reason (my Internet surfing pattern is very bizarre), I decided to look up Step Brothers on Rotten Tomatoes, thinking how it must have at least a 70-75% approval rating like most funny comedies do. However, when I pulled up the page, I was mortified to discover that the film’s approval rating was a measly 54%, and from there, this column had written itself nearly a full week before it had actually been written. I did not want to talk about this film, seeing as I had already discussed one of its direct predecessors, Anchorman, but this offense was too great to ignore. I have to set the record straight for my own peace of mind.
I have said this to my friends many times before, and I’ll say it again in written form: Step Brothers takes stupidity and elevates to an art form on par with Picasso’s blue period. This film is relentless in its stupidity and has no great ambition or desire to make a grand statement about life (I’m looking at you, Annie Hall). If I were to measure comedy by the number of laughs in a film’s running time and the ferocity of said laughs, Step Brothers would easily be one of my top three favorite comedies of all time. Watching Step Brothers requires an oxygen mask on standby because of the constant threat of losing my breath from laughing too hard. To look at the film’s surface elements like plot and character development is to view the film in the wrong way. While those elements are incredibly important in comedy, the most important question to ask for any comedy is does it make you laugh? While the aforementioned Annie Hall does have a plot that flows well, has two great, fully-developed characters, and makes me laugh quite a lot, Step Brothers makes Annie Hall look like a Merchant-Ivory production by comparison.
Perhaps what I love the most about Step Brothers is the same thing I loved about my favorite Will Ferrell film, Elf: the completely overwhelming and endearing innocence of its lead characters, Dale (Reilly) and Brennan (Ferrell). It is truly liberating to watch two men in their forties throw all the confines of adulthood aside and wholeheartedly embrace their inner child. They think before they act, they primitively insult each other; they fight over things as small as a drum set, and they are completely clueless about the intricacies of adulthood. To them, being an adult is no fun when karate in the garage and looking at dirty magazines in a tree house are activities easily available to them. But when their inevitable transition into a form of adulthood finally arrives, it is portrayed as a form of imprisonment, so when Dale and Brennan perform on stage at the fucking Catalina Wine Mixer, it is a glorious return to their childlike enthusiasm and it brings out the same enthusiasm in everybody else present.
I truly believe that the reason this film was not highly praised within the film criticism community is because the majority of them reviewed this film like they would any other. They saw this film with their checklist in hand of the things they feel all competent movies must have: high production value, compelling plot, good performance, etc. But Step Brothers deliberately laughs in the face of the rules of good storytelling and instead aims merely to cram as many gut-bustingly hilarious jokes into its 98-minute runtime as possible. For critics to frown upon that ambition is unfair and, most importantly, unconstitutional. In these depressing times, entertainment like Step Brothers should be valued like the paintings of Van Gogh and used to bring joy to the millions of people who so desperately need it.
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