In defence of Step Brothers: the platonic ideal of Obama-era comedy

The Guardian

a day ago

It's 2008. George W Bush is wrapping up his presidency. The world's economy is in turmoil, but Obama is ascendant. The US's – and the world's – problems will soon be solved once and for all.
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