Step Brothers (film)

Step Brothers
Promotional poster
Directed by	Adam McKay
Screenplay by	Adam McKay Will Ferrell
Story by	Adam McKay Will Ferrell John C. Reilly
Produced by	Jimmy Miller Judd Apatow Adam McKay Will Ferrell
Starring	Will Ferrell John C. Reilly
Cinematography	Oliver Wood
Edited by	Brent White
Music by	Jon Brion
Production companies	Relativity Media The Apatow Company Mosaic Media Group Gary Sanchez Productions
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	July 25, 2008 (2008-07-25)
Running time	98 minutes 106 minutes (unrated version)
Country	United States
Languages	English Spanish
Budget	$65 million
Box office	$128,107,642

Step Brothers is a 2008 American slapstick buddy-comedy film directed by Adam McKay, produced by Judd Apatow and Jimmy Miller, and stars Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, who originally teamed up in Talladega Nights (2006). The screenplay was written by Ferrell and McKay, from a story written by Ferrell, McKay and Reilly. The film was released on July 25, 2008.

Plot

Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and Dale Doback (John C. Reilly) are two unemployed 40 year-olds and spoiled men who still live with and are reliant on their parents. Brennan, who lives with his divorced mother, Nancy (Mary Steenburgen), and Dale, who lives with his widower father, Robert (Richard Jenkins), have no intention of moving out or finding jobs and behave very childishly. Robert and Nancy, upon meeting during a work conference, get married and move in together, forcing Brennan and Dale to live with each other as step brothers; they are resentful and display a childish dislike towards each other. Dale warns Brennan not to touch his drum set, but Brennan does it anyway days later while Dale is not home. This ignites a huge fight taking place from upstairs down to the front yard. Shortly after the fight, they watched Shark Week together, but Robert and Nancy switched off the television and then warns them that they must find jobs and see their therapists within a month or else be forced out of the house. While commiserating, Brennan and Dale discover that they share a number of common interests and gradually overcome their mutual animosity after a visit from Brennan's successful, conceited biological younger brother, Derek (Adam Scott), who is regularly cruel to Brennan out of fun comes to visit with his oddly perfect family. Brennan and Dale retreat to Dale's tree house. Derek drops by to mock them, and entices Dale to punch Derek in the face, which Dale actually does, knocking Derek out of the tree. Brennan is awed by the fact that Dale was able to stand up to Derek. Meanwhile, Derek's wife Alice (Kathryn Hahn), who is also deeply resentful of Derek, finds Dale's courage sexually arousing.

Brennan and Dale take job interviews, for which they perform very poorly, being rude to their two potential employers and pointing out too many of their flaws (such as Dale's unwillingness to work before 11 am), and offending a third (Seth Rogen) when Dale passes gas for almost a minute. In response, they decide to start their own entertainment company called "Prestige Worldwide". However, Robert and Nancy reveal that they are going to retire to sail the world in their beloved boat, and allow Derek to sell the house, forcing Brennan and Dale to find other living arrangements. However, Brennan and Dale sabotage Derek's plans by masquerading as a Neo-Nazi and a Klansman, and by pretending that Brennan has died of asbestos poisoning (after a scene each from Dale and Brennan at therapy), while Derek shows the house to potential buyers. Back at the dinner table, Brennan and Dale have trouble blending in with the others, especially Derek's rude employee, Randy (Rob Riggle). Dale excuses himself to the restroom where Alice forces him into having sex with her. Later, Brennan and Dale premiere their company's first music video, which was filmed on Robert's boat. The video ends when the boat crashes into the rocks, failing the investment after the video, and upon arriving home, Robert brutally spanks Brennan and warns Dale that he's next.

On Christmas Eve, the boys destroy the family's tree and gifts during a spell of sleepwalking, and subsequently attack Robert and then throw him down the stairs after he tries to wake them. Angered to his limit, Robert decides to divorce Nancy causing Dale and Brennan to breakdown. Derek photographs the moment. Dale and Brennan are angered by the divorce and blame each other, reverting to their feeling of dislike towards each other. After another fight which resulted in attempts to bury each other alive, they go their separate ways and move into their own apartments. Brennan starts working for Derek's helicopter leasing firm and Dale works for a catering company. The two gradually begin acting like responsible adults. Brennan, wanting to reunite the broken family, takes the initiative to arrange Derek's sales party: The Catalina Wine Mixer, supervised by Randy. The party is a success, and Brennan wins Randy's respect and approval. However, the singer of the band that Brennan booked (played by Horatio Sanz), a (strictly 80's) Billy Joel tribute band, insults guests after being heckled to his breaking point to play non-80's Joel and is thrown off stage. Derek blames Brennan for this incident, and quickly fires him, believing that this incident will ruin his reputation. Robert then encourages Brennan and Dale to be their eccentric child-at-heart selves again, seeing as how they are now both miserable in their "adult" lives. Brennan and Dale then take the stage and perform "Por ti Volare". While at first they are mocked by Derek, Randy, and others (in a manner similar to how they mocked Brennan back in high school, which caused him to be afraid to sing in public in the first place), Brennan and Dale are unfazed by it, and the audience is eventually moved by the performance (which cause a montage of satirical, but artistic surreal dream sequences of each character), and tensions between the family members are alleviated, while Randy gets emotional and breaks down in tears. After the performance, Brennan and Derek make amends, giving each other a high-five (after a failed attempt to hug).

In the epilogue, Brennan and Dale form their successful company that runs karaoke bars and restaurants. Six months later, Robert and Nancy were reunited and move back into their old home, with a new tree house made from the destroyed boat just for Dale and Brennan, with some nude magazines, Chewbacca masks, and Crossbows. There are two scenes during the closing credits. One of which Dale and Brennan are getting revenge on the kids led by Chris Gardocki (not to be confused with the former NFL punter) that picked on them earlier in the movie, and the other is them sleepwalking getting ready to board a plane.

Cast

• Will Ferrell as Brennan Huff, Nancy's 39-year-old son.
• John C. Reilly as Dale Doback, Robert's 40-year-old son.
• Richard Jenkins as Dr. Robert Doback, Dale's widower father, a medical doctor, now married to Nancy.
• Mary Steenburgen as Nancy Huff-Doback, Brennan's divorced mother who meets Robert at a work conference.
• Adam Scott as Derek Huff, Brennan's successful younger brother, who has a Type A personality.
• Kathryn Hahn as Alice Huff, Derek's sex-crazed, emotionally crazed, negatively treated wife who has an affair with Dale.
• Andrea Savage as Denise, Brennan's therapist and inadvertent love interest.
• Rob Riggle as Randy, Derek's best friend and employee.
• Logan Manus as Chris Gardocki, an 11-year old elementary school student who, along with other kids, abuses Dale on a regular basis. He is later beaten by Dale and Brennan (who get their revenge) in the film's second climax.
• Lurie Poston as Tommy
• Elizabeth Yozamp as Tiffany
• Ken Jeong as a employment agent.
• Wayne Federman as Don, blind man.
• Abigail Wagner as Erica, store owner.
• Carli Coleman as first homebuyer wife.
• Brandon T. Webb as first homebuyer husband.
• Phil LaMarr as second homebuyer husband.
• Matt Walsh as drunk corporate guy.
• Seth Rogen as Sporting goods store manager.
• Gillian Vigman as Pam

Critical reception

The film has received mixed reviews. As of March 2011, the film has a 54% rating based on reviews from critics at the website Rotten Tomatoes, with 96 "fresh" reviews and 81 "rotten" reviews, and a 68% audience rating. At the website Metacritic, which utilizes a normalized rating system, the film earned a mixed rating of 51/100 based on 33 reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film 1½ out of 4 stars.

Box office performance

Step Brothers, as of January 2010, has grossed $100,468,793 domestically, and an additional $28 million internationally.

DVD release

The film was released in a single-disc rated edition, a single-disc unrated edition and a 2-disc unrated edition on December 2, 2008 making $23.04m off 1,316,053 DVD units. As per the latest figures, the film has generated $60,050,590 in revenue (rental/Blu-ray not included).

Sequel

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly have talked about a sequel. Reilly had the idea that they adopt children together.

Adam McKay was also interviewed about the possible sequel. “We’re kicking around the idea of Step Brothers 2," he said. "We feel like there’s way more fat to be mined there. While it isn’t quite the legend that Anchorman is, it has built kind of a nice following. We think it could be a pretty fun one.” He added that Ferrell and Reilly's characters would be mature and have jobs. "One of them’s married and has a kid. They’re still kind of goofballs but they’ve taken three or four steps. Then we have an idea for something happens that knocks him back to square one, and one of the brothers, John C. Reilly sort of instigates it, like ‘we can’t take this anymore.’ And things go really bad, their lives kind of fall apart. They have to pull it back together is sort of the basic structure." McKay has also said that ideas that were not used in the first film may be used in the sequel.

External links

• Step Brothers
• Step Brothers at IMDb
• Step Brothers at AllMovie
• Step Brothers at Box Office Mojo
• Step Brothers at Rotten Tomatoes
• Scoring Session Photo Gallery ScoringSessions.com
• Step Brothers Trailer playnetworks.net