Boats, hoes and dinosaurs – The child­ish bril­liance of Step Brothers

Some­times, noth­ing else quite express­es a feel­ing of con­fused exas­per­a­tion than the phrase, ​“A galaxy of this sucks camel dicks.” Or what about just bleat­ing out, ​“Brennan’s got a mang­i­na,” or, ​“Haha, that’s so fun­ny the last time I heard that I fell off my dinosaur”? Films such as Anchor­man, Pitch Per­fect, and Zoolan­der spawn irre­press­ible mem­o­ries and asso­ci­a­tions with a par­tic­u­lar peri­od of time. It’s almost as if they cre­ate instant nos­tal­gia val­ue. Nos­tal­gia for the present.

Adam McKay’s Step Broth­ers is anoth­er such movie. Like so many oth­ers, I first watched the film with a bunch of friends after school – all teenage girls bored of pet­ty rules and end-of-year exams. Some had seen it before, some hadn’t. But from that point onwards it invad­ed the land­scape of our dai­ly cama­raderie. Our in-jokes were Step Broth­ers in-jokes.

It’s a film that’s dri­ven by the com­e­dy of neu­rot­ic peo­ple liv­ing in close prox­im­i­ty. It can be watched again and again, and each time new one-lin­ers or alter­na­tive scenes will take new promi­nence. Bren­nan (Will Fer­rell) and Dale (John C Reil­ly) enjoy a life of sit­ting at home, drink­ing beer, play­ing with machetes, stash­ing porn and mooching off their par­ents. How­ev­er, they find their indul­gent lifestyles threat­ened when their par­ents mar­ry and they are forced to live togeth­er as siblings.

The open­ing mon­tage tells you almost all you need to know about the state of these man-chil­dren. There’s bare­ly a plot, but the film’s will­ing­ness to embrace the fact that life isn’t a tale with three acts serves to encap­su­late the idle of sta­sis, of two men trapped in the amber of ado­les­cence. The very fact that it doesn’t rely on excit­ing ten­sions, twists or intrigu­ing turns of fate is what makes repeat­ed view­ings more rather than less engaging.

It owes part of its suc­cess to Far­rell and Reilly’s rude comedic chem­istry, already seen in 2006’s Tal­lade­ga Nights: The Bal­lad of Ricky Bob­by, in which Reil­ly plays the sec­ond best team­mate to Ferrell’s arro­gant NASCAR cham­pi­on. In Step Broth­ers, they drag it right to the fore, the pair going head-to-head in a per­fect­ly orches­trat­ed ping-pong match of drum fights and live buri­als. Bren­nan and Dale take Peter Pan syn­drome to anar­chic, R‑rated new extremes, apply­ing the defi­ance of ​‘the boy who nev­er grew’ up to sweaty mid­dle-aged men. And it’s all the more hilar­i­ous because Reil­ly is a Seri­ous Actor known for dra­mas like Mag­no­lia and Gangs of New York.

The film’s humour isn’t mere­ly obscene or trashy, nor is it com­plete­ly unteth­ered from real life. It is all found­ed on relat­able fam­i­ly ten­sions. The par­ents off­set the ludi­crous behav­iour as the com­ic trope of ​‘the straight guy’. There’s some­thing very human about Nan­cy (Mary Steen­bur­gen) and Robert’s (Richard Jenk­ins) unwa­ver­ing devo­tion to their over­grown kids, par­tic­u­lar­ly their con­stant attempts to not give up on a seem­ing­ly hope­less situation.

The ani­mos­i­ty between Bren­nan and his younger broth­er, Derek, or the strain placed on his par­ents’ mar­riage, are all-too recog­nis­able, adding an under­ly­ing lay­er of cathar­sis to the com­ic onslaught. Although we all grow up, in the world of Bren­nan and Dale, what con­sti­tutes a cease­fire is real­is­ing that you both have the same favourite dinosaur. Wouldn’t it be amaz­ing if all adult con­flict could be resolved so easily?

Of its many great sequences, my per­son­al com­ic cen­tre­piece is when Bren­nan and Dale build bunk beds to make room for ​“so many activ­i­ties”. Their gid­dy excite­ment is abrupt­ly cut short when Bren­nan gets dra­mat­i­cal­ly squashed as the child-size bed col­laps­es under their weight. Dale jumps onto the top bunk say­ing, ​“Hey, I for­got to ask, do you like gua­camole?” and the whole thing comes crash­ing down. If you zoom out, the whole film poignant­ly acknowl­edges that moment when child­ish opti­mism is crushed by the real­i­ty of lack­ing basic car­pen­try skills.

Like so many oth­er bright-eyed souls, Dale and Bren­nan decide that music may be their sal­va­tion. They set up an inter­na­tion­al enter­tain­ment com­pa­ny by film­ing an out­ra­geous pro­mo­tion­al music video called ​‘Boats ​‘N Hoes’. But this only caus­es more dra­ma when they crash Robert’s yacht into a sea­wall. The film strips back the ridicu­lous ide­al­ism of infan­tile dreams. It takes recog­nis­able music, offers a tac­it con­nec­tion with the view­er, and then alters per­cep­tion as the track launch­es into parody.

The film is full of these com­ic trig­gers. When­ev­er Guns and Ros­es’ ​‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ comes to mind, it is dif­fi­cult not to asso­ciate the song with Derek bul­ly­ing his fam­i­ly into a ridicu­lous Von Trapp-style ren­di­tion in the car. Yet, despite all of these unsuc­cess­ful endeav­ours, music is the force that reunites the fam­i­ly in the end, giv­ing Step Broth­ers that nec­es­sary, heart­warm­ing glow. When Dale and Bren­nan wow the crowd at a Catali­na Wine Mix­er, its their oper­a­tive per­for­mance of ​‘Por Ti Volare’ that becomes the film’s hero­ic climax.

Today, Step Broth­ers main­tains a bizarre grav­i­tas. Could this be seen as a pre­cur­sor to the com­ic book super­hero movie? Wide-eyed boys are seen bel­liger­ent­ly bick­er­ing to a colos­sal degree before even­tu­al­ly real­is­ing their true poten­tial. This macho man­child vs man­child set up stands as a price­less coun­ter­point to all those exhaust­ing, smash-’em-up block­busters like Bat­man V Super­man or Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War. But unlike those pseu­do-seri­ous epics, when Bren­nan and Dale even­tu­al­ly become best buds, we actu­al­ly devel­op an affin­i­ty to all their idi­ot­ic behav­iour. It takes us back to teenage days, of imma­ture antics between lessons at school.