Step Brothers Reviews

So childish it seems to arrive in diapers, and that's not bad; it's good.

Take the kids at your peril. Mismarketing aside, Step Brothers is crudely funny, which means that sometimes it's crudely hilarious and more often it's just crude.

Step Brothers is not a retread so much as a reduction, stripping away the magical pretext of "Elf" and the period trappings of "Anchorman" to get to the heart of the thriving man-boy genre.

This is a loud, ugly, foul comedy whose shortcomings extends far into the supporting cast.

The film is funny at times but lapses into the reflexive vulgarity that seems to be the default mechanism of the Apatow machinery.

The only thing that can explain middle-aged men acting like 6-year-olds is mental retardation, and there's nothing funny about that. The idea of middle-aged actors playing adolescents isn't much funnier. Put it this way: Such an idea does not make for an inexhaustible source of comedy.

In Step Brothers, the language is simply showing off by talking dirty. It serves no comic function, and just sort of sits there in the air, making me cringe.