I often say that when movies are good, critics are very, very good, but when movies are bad, they're better. It is a challenge sometimes to write an interesting, meaningful review of a dumb comedy like Step Brothers. One of my favorite critics, Cynthia Fuchs, did just that with her review. She did not ask the film to be more than it aspired to be but respected what it was enough to engage with its aspirations and implications within its own terms.
Unable to intervene, ever-pert Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) is, in fact, this spectacle's ideal audience, the girl who can't fathom the anti-nuances of masculine ritual. Watching her man-children clobber each other to sweaty, gasping pulps, she's reduced to abject impropriety... Apparently the only possible punchline for this going-nowhere-slowly scene, Nancy's exclamation also makes clear the fundamental logic of Step Brothers. Demonstrating (and occasionally exaggerating) the lewd, brutal routines that make up the lengthy, much celebrated transition from boy to man in U.S. consumer culture, the movie has plenty of ground to cover. The fact that it's ground often traversed in Ferrell's movies and more recently, in co-producer Judd Apatow's movies, doesn't dampen anyone's enthusiasm or inanity. Rather, the repetition seems to up the ante: how much more can be said, showed, or countenanced? How low can it go?
I love the way she says that films like this "simultaneously to ridicule and celebrate masculinity" and her comment on the role that the female characters play helped me to understand my own reaction:
While they surely ensure that the boys, for all their homoerotic/homophobic rites, are emphatically heterosexual, the women also provide the film's necessary internal audience. Appalled by manifestations of male insecurities and aggressions, they embody those social, domesticating judgments that make such manifestations seem so wild and crazy. That is, the boys are most plainly appalling when the girls are appalled.
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Another way to say this (if I get the point) is that guys are even worse when they know girls are watching, or even if the girls are just willing to listen (and be appropriately grossed out) when they are told what the guys did.
Not many critics would admit their are other opinions as valid as - never mind different than - their own. I appreciate that you linked your piece to Ms Fuch's review and even quoted her. However, as much as I like dumb guy humor, I have to agree with you, this movie slips well below the bar for real amusement. I am sure it will do well on DVD, especially when a bunch of guys are staying over at someone's house.
Thanks, jestrfyl -- Yes, I think Fuchs' point is a very good one. I don't think she liked the movie any more than we did.
I love sharing the insights of my favorite critics here so my readers can get acquainted with some of the best writing about movies, one of the great pleasures of having a blog like this one.
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