In defence of Step Brothers: the platonic ideal of Obama-era comedy
The peak comedy of this era is, of course, Step Brothers. Adam McKay's previous hit collaborations with Will Ferrell, Anchorman and Talladega Nights, hit a rich seam of man-children being elevated to folk-hero status. We could call it a thematic trilogy, if we were being a bit pretentious – like Ingmar Bergman's faith trilogy, but with more prosthetic testicles.
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In Step Brothers, the duo finally boil their theme down to its bare bones: two grown men in their 40s inexplicably acting like 10-year-old boys. Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (John C Reilly) are brought under one roof by the marriage of their parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins). At first, they respond the way any prepubescent imps would, with territorial acrimony and spite, before forming an alliance over their mutual hatred of Brennan's brother Derek (Adam Scott).
Brennan and Dale are the epitome of what would later be known online as 'large adult sons' – giant, gormless failures, sheltered by low expectations. They brawl, assemble bunk beds, and destroy the lives of their retirement-aspirant parents with the destructive force of dogs who don't know their own size. These are the men of the 2000s: outsize children running rampant in a world that lets them do so.
Critics were displeased. 'Another unashamedly juvenile comedy,' wrote Guardian reviewer Peter Bradshaw. 'When I left, I felt a little unclean,' said Roger Ebert. 'In its own tiny way, it lowers the civility of our civilisation.' Nothing will get me in the theatre faster than an affront to civility.
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There are the prosthetic testicles, of course, and there's dog poo, farting, and raucous sex scenes. But Step Brothers transcends all that and builds its own world. It's juvenile and sublime, dumb and clever, dated and timeless.
Ferrell and Reilly have a unique chemistry. They are revolting and endlessly endearing, skating easily over the script's cracks. Together, they invite us to laugh at a dying breed – the coddled, mediocre man – but also celebrate him. As with McKay and Ferrell's previous films, it's a man's world. Women condemn, but are ultimately enthralled by, this masculine freedom. Steenburgen's Nancy can't help but protect her large adult son from a world that expects too much (anything) from him.
The film's innate irony, meanness, and childishness are the dying embers of the Gen X sensibility – a generation which, as the comedian Stewart Lee once wrote, 'profiteered from the assumption that political correctness was a done deal, and now we could have fun jumping in and out of its boundaries, like street kids round a spurting water main.'
But of course, these men weren't dying out. They were mutating into something worse: media behemoths, CEOs and presidents. The dominance of the idiot man was far from over, but it's far more cruel than innocent. The large adult sons who rule the world are still ridiculous, but they're winning.
This may explain why, after Step Brothers, McKay's films got angrier and more literal. His next, the 2010 buddy-cop comedy The Other Guys, ends on an unparalleled bit of tonal whiplash, as the credits are splashed with infographic stats about the beneficiaries of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. The Big Short, Vice, and Don't Look Up are angry polemics dressed up as comedies. 'Can you believe they're getting away with this?' he seems to be yelling at us. Yes. Yes I can.
'Sometimes I think I am living in a nightmare. All about me, standards are collapsing, manners are evaporating, people show no respect for themselves.' That, once again, is Roger Ebert in his 2008 review of Step Brothers. Roger, it was a beautiful dream, and one I cherish. The nightmare is now.
Step Brothers is available to stream on Netflix, Stan, Binge and Prime Video in Australia and available to rent in the UK and US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
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Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
Oasis Wembley guide - Getting to Stadium, pre parties and set times
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So the band will be pulling out all the stops to make sure the next five nights are ones to remember for all the right reasons. Here's everything you need to know about the Wembley Stadium gigs from pre parties, the seating plan to travelling in by car or tube. Stage times If the band keep to the same set times as their previous gigs, doors will open at 5pm, with support acts starting an hour later with Cast at 6pm followed by Richard Ashcroft at 7pm. Oasis will take to the stage at approximately 8:15pm with a 10.30pm curfew. Setlist HelloAcquiesceMorning GlorySome Might SayBring it on DownCigarettes and AlcoholFade AwaySupersonicRoll With ItTalk TonightHalf the World AwayLittle by LittleD'You Know What I MeanStand By MeCast No ShadowSlide AwayWhateverLive ForeverRock 'n' Roll Star Encore MasterplanDon't Look Back in AngerWonderwallChampagne Supernova Wembley seat map Oasis Fanpark There's plenty of opportunity to get your vocal chords warmed up before the Oasis concert, with BOXPARK Wembley providing the ultimate Oasis Fanpark Get ready to belt out hits from the band's back catalogue as you get hyped to see the Gallagher brothers live on stage at Wembley Stadium. As well as offering fans an incredible atmosphere before and after the concert, BOXPARK Wembley will also be ready to provide plenty of refreshment. With an impressive lineup of 22 mouthwatering restaurants and three bars, the BOXPARK Wembley food and drink choices will tickle everyone's taste buds. And with light and spacious social seating areas, there's nowhere better to get together with friends and family and try a little bit of everything. Arriving by tube Wembley Park is well-connected, making it easy to reach from central London. With three stations and three tube lines, choosing to use the London Underground to see Oasis at Wembley Stadium is a good option. Wembley Park is in Zone 4. You can plan your visit using the TFL (Transport for London) official website. Tube Lines to Wembley Park: Jubilee Line: Access from Wembley Park station. Metropolitan Line: Access from Wembley Park station. 12 minutes from Baker Street. Bakerloo Line: Access from Wembley Central Station, connecting to Paddington, Charing Cross and Waterloo. London Overground Line: Access from Wembley Central Station to Clapham Junction in 22 minutes. Tube Station Services this August and September: Wembley Park station: Currently there is no anticipated disruption Wembley Central station: Currently there is no anticipated disruption Example Distances from Wembley Park Tube: Bond Street: 19 minutes via Jubilee Line King's Cross: 20 minutes via Metropolitan Line Paddington: 24 minutes via Bakerloo Line (from Wembley Central) Charing Cross: 30 minutes via Bakerloo Line (from Wembley Central) London Bridge: 27 minutes via Jubilee Line Liverpool Street: 30 minutes via Metropolitan Line Parking Public transport is recommended but driving is also a convenient option. Wembley Park offers over 3,000 secure parking spaces, starting at £40 or £25 for Blue Badge holders. To ensure a smooth experience, book your Wembley Stadium parking spot in advance. To reach Wembley Park by car for Oasis' concert, use the postcode HA9 0FA in your Sat Nav. 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Arrive early to avoid delays. Check Services: Ensure you're aware of any rail or bus diversions and road closures that may affect your journey. Follow Official Guidance: On Wembley event days, follow directions from staff and signage for a smooth experience. Oasis: What's Their Story? An unofficial celebration magazine on sale now! A few simple words on social media on August 27 in 2024 were enough to spark pandemonium among Oasis fans and were the catalyst for the most eagerly awaited UK gigs of all time. This special unofficial magazine, available to order here, marks the reunion and honours the band both now and down the years with our incredible archive of photos and interviews - and with exclusive reviews and photographs of their first show! Bag policy You cannot take any bag larger than an A4 piece of paper (H 297mm, W 210mm and D 210mm) into Wembley Stadium, so check the dimensions of your bag before you leave the house. Any matchday merchandise you buy will be supplied in a clear plastic bag, and will be allowed into the stadium as well. If you buy merchandise outside the stadium – either from one of our retail outlets or the stadium store – the bag will be sealed. Do not break the seal until you enter the stadium. Items to bring and what to leave at home You CAN'T bring Bags which don't meet the Bag Policy (medical exemptions apply) Large umbrellas Aluminium and glass drink containers, including perfume bottles Plastic bottles over 500ml Alcohol Food and drink Pushchairs Selfie sticks Weapons and tools Flares, lasers, smoke devices and cannisters Large-bodied cameras and camcorders Drones Unauthorised musical instruments, vuvuzelas or megaphones Any national flag not of the competing international teams What can I bring? Bags meeting our Bag Policy (medical exemptions apply) Small umbrellas Clear empty crushable plastic bottles 500ml or less (not permitted in pitch standing for concerts) Small flags and banners (regulations apply) Crutches and walking aids Tour dates in full Fri 25 Jul – Wembley Stadium, London Sat 26 Jul – Wembley Stadium, London Wed 30 Jul – Wembley Stadium, London Sat 2 Aug – Wembley Stadium, London Sun 3 Aug – Wembley Stadium, London Fri 8 Aug – Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh Sat 9 Aug – Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh Tue 12 Aug – Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh Sat 16 Aug – Croke Park, Dublin Sun 17 Aug – Croke Park, Dublin Sun 24 Aug – Rogers Stadium, Toronto, ON Mon 25 Aug – Rogers Stadium, Toronto, ON Thu 28 Aug – Soldier Field, Chicago, IL Sun 31 Aug – MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ Mon 1 Sep – MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ Sat 6 Sep – Rose Bowl Stadium, Los Angeles, CA Sun 7 Sep – Rose Bowl Stadium, Los Angeles, CA Fri 12 Sep – Estadio GNP Seguros, Mexico City, MX Sat 13 Sep – Estadio GNP Seguros, Mexico City, MX Sat 27 Sep – Wembley Stadium, London Sun 28 Sep – Wembley Stadium, London Tues 21 Oct – Goyang Stadium, Seoul, South Korea Sat 25 Oct – Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan Sun 26 Oct – Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan Fri 31st Oct – Marvel Stadium, Melbourne, Australia Sat 1st Nov – Marvel Stadium, Melbourne, Australia Tues 4 Nov- Marvel Stadium, Melbourne Sat 7th Nov – Accor Stadium, Sydney, Australia Sun 8th Nov – Accor Stadium, Sydney, Australia Sat 15 Nov – Estadio River Plate, Buenos Aires, Argentina Sun 16 Nov – Estadio River Plate, Buenos Aires, Argentina Wed 19 Nov – Estadio Nacional, Santiago, Chile Sat 22 Nov – Estadio MorumBIS, São Paulo, Brazil Sun 23 Nov – Estadio MorumBIS, São Paulo, Brazil
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Adam Sandler could save cinema (but he doesn't want to)
With reddened arms and moistened brow, the hardy Hollywood executive gazes out across his fields and frowns. On the horizon languishes a tangled and overgrown plot: a place where comedy once grew, before he gave up on it, and whose once bountiful soils have since gone untilled. There was a man who once worked wonders there – Adam Sandler, they called him – who for a couple of decades had cultivated farces, capers and romcoms which cumulatively grossed $3.9 billion worldwide. Then one winter 10 years ago, he and his folk vanished – scuttling off behind the vast iron gates of the Netflix factory – and cinemas never saw him again. This Willy Wonka-like career move – a retreat that left him busier as ever, yet in certain respects, barely visible – is something that has made Sandler completely unique in movie star terms. Its commercial and psychological meanings take a little digging into, but its significance for cinemas is clear: survival has been that bit harder without him. True, Sandler's films were not of the sort which typically troubled the Oscars, or Sight & Sound year-end polls. One of his last theatrical released comedies, 2013's Grown Ups 2, began with a white-tailed deer breaking into Sandler's bedroom and urinating in his face, setting the tone rather deftly for the 101 minutes of twaddle that followed. But the sort of output made by Sandler and his production company Happy Madison once filled a crucial gap in the summer movie market. In late June or July, just as visual-effects fatigue was setting in, titles such as Big Daddy, Mr Deeds, Click, and the Grown Ups diptych would arrive – and often sold a great many tickets before the more refined autumn schedule kicked in. (Between 1999 and 2015, the films made by Happy Madison earned back an average of twice their costs.) 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This is hard to call for a number of reasons – not least among them that his brute pulling power had apparently started to wane by the mid-2010s when relations with his prior patron, Sony Pictures Entertainment, began to sour. (More on this shortly.) But a Happy Gilmore 2 theatrical run might have had similar commercial appeal to the the forthcoming Liam Neeson-led reboot of The Naked Gun; another revival of a beloved comic property last seen in the mid-1990s. Analysts are predicting a $25 million opening weekend for that one in the US alone – though just how far it might go is hard to call, given the near-total lack of recent comparators. Mainstream studio comedies went all but extinct around 10 years ago, as the genre's gentler aspects were absorbed by fantasy franchises and rougher ones were rendered not worth the trouble by our increasingly shrill public discourse. It's hard to imagine Sandler getting away with That's My Boy – in which a middle-schooler is seduced by his female teacher, whom he subsequently impregnates, all played for laughs – even a couple of years after its 2012 release. Hence both sides' enthusiasm for that unique and mutually lucrative deal. The films might still attract the odd bad review, but no traditional media launch means no broader media scrutiny, no online storms in teacups, and no humiliating stories about terrible ticket sales should an individual title fail to click with audiences. Nor is there an intricate global launch to manage. The classic Sandler format, in which a cosseted man-child reconciles himself to life's responsibilities and obtains fame, fortune and/or an improbably hot spouse, is one which travels well – a rare quality in comedy, and one which makes him uniquely valuable to an international streaming platform. (When Netflix renewed Sandler's contract in 2020, it also revealed that its global user base had spent two billion hours watching his films since 2015.) So what happens instead? Each film simply lands on the homepages of Sandler-friendly subscribers, hangs around the top 10 for a week or so, then quietly slides its way down into the great online content chasm, to be tripped over now and again by random menu scrollers. This means that if you haven't seen (or even heard of) some of the films Sandler has made since joining Netflix, it's because the algorithm has decided you don't need to know. And given Sandler-brand humour is famously as divisive as it is popular – those who don't find his comedy appealing will be sure to let you know – that just makes things easier for all concerned. That circus was what he had clearly tired of by the mid-2010s, and the feeling was somewhat mutual. Sandler joined forces with Sony Pictures in the late 1990s following the enormous success of his early 'big four' – Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer and The Waterboy – and would replicate their formulas for the studio, with tweaks, over a dozen further features in 14 years. But with the repetition, a certain jadedness set in. The 2014 hack of the studio's email servers revealed an internal complaint about a corporate fixation on 'mundane, formulaic Adam Sandler films', plus details of a disastrous pitch meeting for a Sandler film based on the popular American board game Candyland, after which the studio head had branded their golden goose an 'a--hole'. Even Sandler himself seemed increasingly tuned out. In 2011's Jack and Jill, in which Sandler plays both a cynical ad executive and his obnoxious twin sister, he often seems visibly bored by his own screenplay – which, perhaps tellingly, is about a Jewish New Yorker whose considerable talents have led to him becoming a cosseted sell-out, and who is subsequently haunted by his perpetually blabbering and flatulent low-class shadow self. There's a dark element of autobiography there – similar to 2009's Funny People, in which Sandler plays a gifted stand-up who goes to Hollywood and becomes trapped in a forever-cycle of making moronic films. The thing is, in Funny People, Sandler's character has leukaemia to shake him out of his rut. In real life, he had to make do with Netflix. So why not retire, rather than go to Netflix to spend another decade making more of the same? Those with a weakness for armchair psychoanalysis might suggest the reason is rooted in Sandler's working-class origins. Born in Brooklyn long before it was fashionable, he was raised by an electrician father and nursery teacher mother, and broke into show-business via the stand-up circuit in his teens. By his early 20s he was on Saturday Night Live; fast forward to his early 30s, and he was already a movie star. However, the performers he'd long identified as his peers – other self-made stand-up survivors such as Rob Schneider, David Spade and Nick Swardson – seemed to struggle in Hollywood without Sandler's patronage. And he was hit hard by the loss in 1997 of his SNL cast-mate Chris Farley, who died at the age of 33 from a cocaine and heroin overdose. So in the years ahead, Sandler would come up with cameos, supporting roles, and even entire Happy Madison features, just to keep his gang employed. It's hard not to suspect he felt and continues to feel a responsibility, in some deep corner of his psyche, to keep ploughing on, and be the tide that lifts all ships. If he's found success at a level that eluded all these other guys he finds just as funny…well, it's within his power to provide karmic redress. His streaming deal allows him to keep doing that, but the greater ease of it also seems to have whetted his appetite for meatier work. In all the time he was at Sony, Sandler made just two great Elevated Sandler films – Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love and Funny People – and attempted two more, Men, Women & Children and The Cobbler. In comparison, the Netflix years have thus far yielded The Meyerowitz Stories and Uncut Gems, plus three further valiant oddities (Hustle, Spaceman, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah) and the appealing prospect of the new Noah Baumbach project, Jay Kelly, in which Sandler stars opposite George Clooney, and is expected to premiere at Venice this year. For that one, at least, Netflix has lined up a short theatrical run in November – a necessity to wriggle it into Oscar and Bafta contention. For just a few brief weeks, cinemas will have their former all-flapping, all-honking golden goose back in the fold. Happy Gilmore 2 is on Netflix from Friday 25 July
BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
Kpop Demon Hunters: Is Golden the best movie song?
What's the one song from the movies that you love more than any other? Maybe it's super catchy, really emotional, or just makes you want to dance. From Frozen's Let It Go to 'We don't talk about Bruno, no, no, no' or maybe, Steve's 'La-la-la-lava, ch-ch-ch-chicken'...Movie songs have a way of sticking in our heads – and our now, the world's new obsession is a song called Golden, from the animated action film K-Pop Demon Hunters – and it's blowing up in a big way. Since the film's release on Netflix last month, music from two fictional bands featured in the story – the girl group Huntr/x and the rebellious Saja Boys – have dominated the global music charts and social tracks from the film's soundtrack have featured on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States. Their songs have risen to the top of Spotify's US chart and Golden is currently in second spot is also climbing the UK Singles Chart and already in the Top film is number one in Netflix's movie chart for the UK and has been viewed more than 30 millions times across the world. The film tells the story of Rumi, Mira, and Zoey, mega-famous K-pop stars who have a big secret: they're also demon hunters!One moment they're on stage performing to screaming fans. The next, they're battling spooky creatures to save the you seen the film and is Golden now your must listened to movie song of choice? Let us know in the comments.
