Step Brothers-Funniest Ferrell movie since Elf. Will and Reilly are a comedy Plant & Page

* * * * 1/2 (out of 5)

I can't oversell this movie. It had me in stitches right from the opening quote. George W. Bush's infamous: "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." In George W. Bush we find where Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly get their inspiration for retardation.

I cracked up at the quote and a lady next to me said to her kids, "I still don't know why that's funny." What I got from that was that this movie is good enough that people are seeing it a second time.

I'm sure you know the premise. Two guys who are at or near 40 live with their single parents and when the parents decide to marry each other, these "boys" are forced to move in with them. In the same room. And they hate each other, just because they feel they should. But one of the early priceless moments comes at dinner when Ferrell makes fun of Reilly and Reilly says something along the lines of "that's so funny I forgot to laugh", but he butchers the comeback and STILL Ferrell gets so upset that his face breaks down on the verge of tears. There are a few moments in this film where grown men crying is played for Huge laughs.

The man-child is a growing phenomenon in this country and I certainly know enough guys who come close to this category. A therapist in the film likens the ideal of grown men living with their parents and not supporting themselves to an addiction and the parents are enablers. The parents are well intentioned, but are crippling their children by not forcing them to grow up and sprout their own wings. But these are heavier issues than this film cares to deal with. Instead they prefer to watch as two grown men sleep walk like 8 year olds and tear the house to shit when they get in their fights. Tossing the decorated Christmas tree on their parents' bed was one milk snorting surprise.

If the movie is 92 minutes long I'd say there are at least 110 good jokes. When the father is so fed up with the "boys" that he threatens to sell the house, Ferrell asks quietly, "Why? Is it haunted?" Sometimes in films like these the lead actor is so funny and everyone else is just fodder for his humor, but there is plenty of funny to go around here.

Reilly is very much Ferrell's equal. He's a truly great actor, who's been nominated for Oscars and gotten tons of street cred in Hollywood, but people love him most for his dopey role in Ferrell's Talladega Nights. TN is good, but can't hold a candle to Step Brothers. Reilly and Ferrell are now so in synch, it's the comedy equivalent of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page on Led Zeppelin II.

Richard Jenkins (Ben Stiller's disinterested psychiatrist from There's Something About Mary) gets funnier with each movie, this time as Reilly's father, Dr. Robert Doback. When Reilly good naturedly asks if they could double team the new mom, Doback looks like he's going to have a stroke. Adam Scott as Ferrell's super successful brother Derek is like a post-Oprah Tom Cruise, filled with nutty narcissism and needs a punch in the face good looks. At Christmas dinner he brags in front of his kids about blowing a ".079 on the breathalyzer," thus beating the cop at his own game. His wife is played by Kathryn Hahn and her scenes with Reilly are both priceless and borderline disgusting.

But the straight person in the whole stew is the woman playing Ferrell's mother, Oscar-winner, Mary Steenburgen. She played Ferrell's step mother in Elf and does a great job acting as his loving mother here. As she gets older she still radiates charm and beauty and gives the movie a dose of class that it is missing on all other fronts. When she drives him to their new home, he's still in the backseat and talks trash like a kid suffering from Tourettes. Discussing his new step brother, "He better not get in my face cuz I'll drop kick that mother f***er." Several times in the movie you can see Steenburgen wanting to bust out laughing.

Oh, Warning. I saw tons of kids in the theatre, but this movie is rated R for a reason. The language is as raunchy as Goodfellas. But if you want to be a cool parent, your kids will have the best filthy comebacks to throw at their classmates in the schoolyard this Fall.

The Freditor