Ferrell-Reilly duo scores again in "Step Brothers"

by Clint O'Connor/Plain Dealer Film Critic

Thursday July 24, 2008, 6:55 AM

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play adolescent-brained louts who are forced to live together in "Step Brothers." The new comedy opens nationwide Friday.

REVIEW

Step Brothers

Who: With Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Mary Steenburgen. Directed by Adam McKay.

Rated: R for crude and sexual content, and pervasive language.

Running time: 97 minutes.

When: Opens Friday.

Where: Area theaters.

Grade: B

The funniest scene in "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" was when Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly sat around the dinner table arguing about which Jesus to pray to. Ferrell, as Ricky, favored the baby Jesus, in a diaper.

That largely improvised scene launched the Ferrell-Reilly comedy chemistry and served as the spirited spring board for their next film together, because director Adam McKay wanted to keep the laughs coming. McKay, Ferrell's longtime writing partner who also gave us "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," saw potential in a story about two lazy louts locked in adolescence. The result, "Step Brothers," reflects the classic Ferrell-McKay model.

It's raunchy, rowdy, packed with improvisation, and is firmly committed to buckshot comedy: Blast 50 jokes every five minutes and two or three are likely to hit.

"Step Brothers" is splendidly stupid, furiously foul-mouthed, and actually features two stellar performances at its center.

Ferrell and Reilly play Brennan and Dale, case studies in arrested development, who are forced to live together when their long-single folks (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) get married.

Jobless and clueless, Brennan and Dale prove to be a toxic presence for their parents. They do, however, offer winning wardrobes. In their first encounter, Brennan, inexplicably clad in a Pablo Cruise T-shirt, sizes up Dale, who's sporting a giant wrap-around Yoda. Their evolving T-shirt choices become a suitably silly running gag.

Brennan is repeatedly shown up by his successful younger brother Derek, played well by Adam Scott, while Dale attracts the bizarre advances of Derek's wife, Alice. As frantic Alice, the terrific Kathryn Hahn improvises several strange sexual moments while taking over-the-top to new vistas.

As summer comedies go, "Step Brothers" provides some good belly laughs. Though not as cleverly conceived or fully formed as "Talladega Nights" or "Anchorman," this movie works because Ferrell and Reilly are completely believable as 13-year-olds stuck in 40-year-old bodies.

The duo is not selling some lame version of overgrown kids. Rather, they completely inhabit that endlessly frustrating world of young boys, boys who dream of what grown-up life is really like. In Brennan and Dale's case, they may never know.