Step Brothers is a 2008 American buddy slapstick comedy film starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. The screenplay was written by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, from a story written by them with Reilly. It was produced by Jimmy Miller and Judd Apatow, and directed by McKay.
The film was released on July 25, 2008, two years after the same group of men wrote, produced, and starred in another comedy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.
Plot
39-year-old Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and 40-year-old Dale Doback (John C. Reilly) are two unemployed, middle-aged, spoiled, offensive, and self-centered men who still live with (and are reliant on) their parents. They have no intention of moving out or finding jobs and behave childishly. When Brennan's mother Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) and Dale's father Robert (Richard Jenkins) marry, Brennan and Dale are forced to live with each other as step brothers.
Despite strong warnings from Dale not to touch his drumset, Brennan proceeds to play around on the drumset during Dale's absence. When Dale notices a chip on the drumstick, he accuses Brennan of touching his drumset, to which Brennan vehemently denies. The argument soon turns into a full-out brawl on the front lawn with their parents receiving urgent calls during work notifying them of the fight, to which they hurry home to witness. Their parents warn them that they must find jobs within a month or else be forced out of the house. When Brennan's successful younger brother Derek (Adam Scott), an arrogant and rude helicopter leasing agent, comes to visit with his oddly perfect family, he mocks their unsuccessful lives and entices Dale to punch him in the face, to which Dale unexpectedly complies. Brennan is awed that Dale was able to stand up to Derek since Derek embarrassed Brennan at a talent show years prior. Meanwhile, Derek's wife Alice (Kathryn Hahn), who is also resentful of Derek, finds Dale's courage a turn on, thus beginning a sexual affair between the two. Brennan and Dale use this incident to discover their many shared interests and develop a strong friendship.
Brennan and Dale are unsuccessful in obtaining jobs after annoying all of their prospective employers. After the interview, a local school bully, Chris Gardocki (Logan Manus) and his classmates bully Brennan and Dale. Robert and Nancy reveal their plans to retire and sail the world, and demand that Brennan and Dale find other living arrangements. Consequently, the two sabotage attempts to sell the house by dressing up as a Nazi and a Klansman and Brennan pretending to be a corpse after dying of the alleged asbestos fibers in the house.
Dale and Brennan, in their attempts to start an entertainment company, "Prestige Worldwide", release their first music video for their song "Boats 'N Hoes" in front of their family at Derek's birthday party, which shows them accidentally wrecking Robert's boat. Angered to his limits, Robert refuses the investment and spanks Brennan after a heated verbal exchange between the two. Robert later walks out on Christmas Eve to go to the Cheesecake Factory for a drink and, upon his return later that evening, proclaims to Nancy that it was the "happiest he had been in months". The following day, at Christmas dinner, he announces his intention to divorce Nancy, causing Brennan and Dale to break down.
Upon discovering that each blames the other for the divorce, the boys fight again but decide to go their separate ways. Brennan starts working for Derek's helicopter leasing firm and Dale works for a catering company.
Brennan, wanting to reunite the broken family, takes the initiative to manage the Catalina Wine Mixer, a prestigious helicopter leasing event, for Derek's company and invites Robert and Nancy. They hire the catering company for whom Dale works, thus reuniting the latter family. The party is apparently a success, until the singer, predominantly covering 80's Billy Joel hits, responds to heckles for older Billy Joel hits with a few insults of his own and is thrown off of the stage. With the stage empty and Derek faulting Brennan for the singer's mishap, Robert ultimately encourages Brennan and Dale to be their eccentric child-at-heart selves again, sympathizing with their misery in their "adult" lives due to an experience as a 17-year-old when his dad told him to stop acting like a child and give up his dreams of being a dinosaur. Inspired by Robert's words, Brennan and Dale take to the stage and perform "Por ti Volare." Derek (like the rest of the audience) is so moved by the performance that he and Brennan make amends. Dale terminates his affair with Alice, stating that she should be faithful in marriage, very much to her dismay.
Six months later, Robert and Nancy are reunited and move back into their old home, while Brennan and Dale form a successful entertainment company that runs karaoke events.
After the credits, Brennan and Dale confront Gardocki and his classmates, fighting and effortlessly beating many of the kids and causing the remainder to run away. Brennan and Dale then walk away, with the two lightly arguing about the latter's drum set.
Cast
Critical reception
Step Brothers received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 55%, based on 181 reviews, with an average rating of 5.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The relentless immaturity of the humor is not a total handicap for this film, which features the consistently well-matched talents of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly." At the website Metacritic, which utilizes a normalized rating system, the film has a score of 51 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Roger Ebert gave the film 1 1/2 out of 4 stars and stated, "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".
Home media release
The film was released for home video on December 2, 2008 in a single-disc rated edition, a single-disc unrated edition and a 2-disc unrated edition. The film generated sales an estimated 3.87 million units in DVD and Blu-ray, totaling $63.7 million. For the home video release, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, and Adam McKay recorded a commentary track mostly in song, accompanied by Jon Brion; the track covers "the movie-making process [and] their characters' offscreen lives" in remarks that range "from the inspired to the irritatingly prolonged, but when Ferrell and Reilly really get into a good groove, they're actually funnier than the main feature."
Rap album
Adam McKay announced on Twitter that production of a Step Brothers rap album featuring John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell had begun, but later said that the rap album fell apart and will not be released.
Possible sequel
Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly have talked about a sequel. Reilly had the idea.
Adam McKay was also interviewed about the possible sequel. "We're kicking around the idea of Step Brothers 2," he said. "We feel like there's way more fat to be mined there. While it isn't quite the legend that Anchorman is, it has built kind of a nice following. We think it could be a pretty fun one." He added that Ferrell and Reilly's characters would be mature and have jobs. "One of them's married and has a kid. They're still kind of goofballs but they've taken three or four steps. Then we have an idea for something happens that knocks him back to square one, and one of the brothers, John C. Reilly sort of instigates it, like 'we can't take this anymore.' And things go really bad, their lives kind of fall apart. They have to pull it back together is sort of the basic structure." McKay has also said that ideas that were not used in the first film may be used in the sequel.
Director Adam McKay spoke to Empire in February 2014 and appeared to rule out a sequel to Anchorman 2 or Step Brothers saying "No, that's the last sequel we're gonna do. There's nothing more fun to me than new characters and a new world. And now we're releasing this alt version, we're totally satisfied. No Anchorman 3."
However, in an interview with Collider posted on 21st October 2014, Adam McKay indicated the door was still open for a Step Brothers sequel at some point, while making clear it wasn't a short term development priority.
"We have a whole story [for Step Brothers 2], an outline that we're happy with. We were ready to go, and you know the story of [how] we got the call on Anchorman 2. We're not gonna do it now 'cause we just did a sequel, I don't wanna get into the sequel business too much. It was kind of a novelty to do one of them and it was certainly very interesting and I had never done anything like it. So I want to go make some original movies--or you know, The Big Short is an adaptation but do some different stuff. But who knows? 2-3 years, 3-4 years. I mean the funny thing with Step Brothers is if those guys are in their 50's it still works, so we could easily return to that, but for now no sequels."
ArrayReferences
ArrayExternal links
- Step Brothers
- Step Brothers at the Internet Movie Database
- Step Brothers at AllMovie
- Step Brothers at Box Office Mojo
- Step Brothers at Rotten Tomatoes
- Scoring Session Photo Gallery ScoringSessions.com
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