If Step Brothers was just a little more focused and less scattershot, this could have been a great comedy. The screenplay by star Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay (Talladega Nights) is all over the place, and seems pretty thin even for a 95 minute long comedy. That being said, there are some laughs to be found, and it's admirable how head-on Ferrell and his co-star, John C. Reilly, tackle the material they've been given. It's not enough to make Step Brothers a rousing success, but I have to admit, I enjoyed it more than I was expecting to.

Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and Dale Doback (John C. Reilly) are both 40-year-old men who have never left home, can barely hold down a job, and seem to have stopped maturing when they were 12. They are brought together when Brennan's mother Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) and Dale's dad Robert (Richard Jenkins) meet at a convention, and immediately fall in love. The parents marry, and now the two men must live under the same roof with each other. Brennan and Dale initially hate each other, so much so that Brennan tries to bury Dale alive in the front yard. They soon discover that they have a common enemy when Brennan's much more successful and smarmy younger brother, Derek (Adam Scott), arrives with plans to convince the parents to move on with their lives, thereby forcing the two to actually live on their own for once and become real adults. It also becomes quite clear that the new step brothers are putting a strain on their parents' relationship. Dale and Brennan must now figure out a way to work together and prove to everyone that they can make it in the world, and to keep the family together.

There are a lot of times where Step Brothers doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. There are even less times when the movie seems to know what it wants Brennan and Dale to be. Sometimes, they come across as crude and immature, such as the scene where Brennan plays Dale's prized drum set while rubbing a certain part of the male anatomy all over it. Sometimes they are like overgrown children, given how they hide out in the tree house when things go bad, or obsess over junk food and kung fu movies. And sometimes, they are vicious monsters, such as the previously mentioned "buried alive" scene, or the part where Dale tries to drown Brennan. Fortunately, the comic energy of Ferrell and Reilly prevent their characters from becoming too hateful or annoying. While I never could like the two leads (and I don't think I was supposed to), I did admire the way that the actors completely throw themselves head-on with everything they're asked to do. John C. Reilly is certainly no stranger to dramatic roles, but it's certainly impressive how he can get in the raunchy and dumb spirit of the movie without dumbing down his performance.

While I was not exactly anticipating plot complexity walking into the film, I do think the filmmakers could have made a bit more of an effort to hide the fact that they got away with having a studio pay them to have its two lead stars act stupid for two or three months. The brothers' rivalry with Derek is never really developed to the point that it feels like it's driving the story, and a subplot concerning Derek's sexually frustrated wife Alice (Kathryn Hahn) coming onto Dale never really seems to have a pay off, even if Hahn does get a couple good laughs during the film. The film is episodic in nature, with each scene kind of coming across as a series of loosely connected short films. This prevents the film from truly clicking, as it barely feels like a movie to start with. It gets to the point that I felt like I was watching a series of skits featuring a recurring Ferrell character from his Saturday Night Live days. This still doesn't excuse the unmemorable third act of the film, which loses much of the comic energy that at least kept the movie afloat.

I know it probably sounds like I didn't like the movie, but I must admit, I did laugh out loud a few times. Step Brothers is one of those movies that kind of meanders along, not really gaining your confidence, and then suddenly an inspired one liner or a piece of dialogue will hit you out of the blue, and you find yourself in a much better mood. Such moments include Dale's reaction to Brennan's singing ("Your voice is like a cross between Fergie and Jesus".), and his reaction to his step brother's collection of vintage Hustler magazines ("It's like masturbating in a time machine!"). It's unfortunate that the film's humor has to mainly rely on gross out gags (the guys being made to lick dog feces by the neighborhood bully kid) and uninspired physical humor (a running gag concerning Brennan and Dale sleepwalking), because it's the dialogue that got the biggest laughs from me. I couldn't tell if it was scripted or improvised on the spot, but the humor concerning their bizarre observations on the world had me laughing more than anything else in the film.

In terms of intentionally dumb comedies turning out to be guilty pleasures, Step Brothers didn't quite win me over the same way You Don't Mess With the Zohan did. I still chuckle to myself when I think back on that film, whereas I don't think I'll even be remembering this one a few months from now. Maybe this movie needed a little bit more honesty about its own subject matter of men who refuse to grow up. What I do know is that it needed some more work at the screenplay level. Step Brothers has all the makings of a memorable comedy, and it's a real shame that no one acted upon it.

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