Step Brothers (2008)

As with every so called comedian to come out of Saturday Night Live in the last couple of decades, those who manage to find success on the big screen find a success that is often difficult to explain. Will Ferrell epitomizes that unexplained success by making millions playing deranged characters who appear to be exactly the same in every film... crackheads.

Step Brothers continues the string of crude comedies that seem to have replaced or evolved from the ever popular "teen comedies", by taking the same material and increasing the vulgarity, sex and drugs to a whole new level of absurdity. Starring Will Ferrell as Brennan Huff and John C. Reilly as Dale Doback, Step Brothers is a story of two 40 year old guys still living with their single parents, who become step brothers when their parents meet, fall in love and get married. Now Brennan and Dale must learn to live together, or learn to grow up and move on with their own lives before they end up destroying the whole family with their immature behavior.

Written by Will Ferrell himself, it shouldn't be too surprising that Step Brothers is shallow and as pointless as washing your car in the rain, yet it should also be no surprise that viewers seem to flock to the theaters to see this display of moral depredation on a regular basis, continuing to give studios further reasons to churn them out. I figured Step Brothers might be a little different than it's predecessors, based on the trailers it appeared to be an amusing film without as much of the grime, but when do the trailers ever lie? Even without the barrage of pointless vulgarity and crude humor Step Brothers would still be a failure, finding its laughs in a script that's so infantile it actaully makes the Scary Movie franchise look top notch.

I'll admit I laughed a few times throughout the film (everything shown in the trailer) but it's nowhere in the same league as some of the smart, witty and clean comedies that don't find it necessary to get cheap laughs from crude humor and actually standout to become classic comedies, where Step Brothers is ultimately forgotten the moment it ends. But I guess in an industry whose main goal is to rob it's viewers rather than reward them with quality films it's easier and more profitable to crank out these pointless comedies than to put a little time and effort into actually making something worth while that doesn't add to the consistent dumbing down of teenagers in our society.

4/10