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Step Brothers
Columbia Pictures (Sony)

Step Brothers reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 51 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.1 out of 10
based on 33 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 59 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for crude and sexual content, and pervasive language

Starring Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Richard Jenkins, Mary Steenburgen, Adam Scott, and Katherine Hahn

Brennan Huff is a sporadically employed thirty-nine-year-old who lives with his mother, Nancy. Dale Doback is a terminally unemployed forty-year-old who lives with his father, Robert. When Robert and Nancy marry and move in together, Brennan and Dale are forced to live with each other as step brothers. As their narcissism and downright aggressive laziness threaten to tear the family apart, these two middle-aged, immature, overgrown boys will orchestrate an insane, elaborate plan to bring their parents back together. To pull it off, they must form an unlikely bond that maybe, just maybe, will finally get them out of the house. (Sony Pictures)


GENRE(S): Comedy  
WRITTEN BY: Will Ferrell
Adam McKay
 
DIRECTED BY: Adam McKay  
RELEASE DATE: Theatrical: July 25, 2008 
RUNNING TIME: minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

88
New York Post Kyle Smith
There is too much funny here for a movie (even though it continues into the closing credits). Step Brothers should be a TV show.
Read Full Review
80
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
So childish it seems to arrive in diapers, and that's not bad; it's good.
Read Full Review
80
Village Voice Scott Foundas
Not to wax too serious here (since this is, after all, a movie in which two nearly middle-aged men beat each other over the heads with blunt instruments on their front lawn), but ticking away just beneath Step Brothers' freely associative surface is a fairly astute commentary on how we define such abstract concepts as "growing up" and "making something of yourself."
Read Full Review
75
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Step Brothers is a Judd Apatow production and it's the closest that the Apatow factory has come to spitting out a dumb-and-dumber high-concept comedy.
Read Full Review
75
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
While Ferrell and Reilly are great together, hatching harebrained schemes that have no basis in reality, part of the unexpected treat of Step Brothers is watching Jenkins and Steenburgen sink to such blithely immature levels of rude and crude comedy.
Read Full Review
75
Premiere Jenni Miller
Step Brothers is a hard R, for good reason. While it's somewhat sweeter, if you will, than a typical Apatow flick, the ludicrous situations call for equally ludicrous behavior and statements.
Read Full Review
70
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Stupid, crude and hilarious, Step Brothers works by sneaking past our better judgment.
Read Full Review
67
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Step Brothers at its best is a smarter "Dumb and Dumber."
Read Full Review
63
Boston Globe Ty Burr
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.
Read Full Review
63
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
It's a testament to their performances -- and the spirit of this surprisingly raunchy, decidedly R-rated comedy -- that by the end credits, you've grown to like them a little bit. You just wouldn't want to live with them.
Read Full Review
63
TV Guide Staff (Not credited)
The inspired pairing of "Talledega's" Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, two actors smart enough to play dumb and make it work.
Read Full Review
63
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Stupid, predictable and fairly funny.
Read Full Review
63
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Starting at infantile and regressing hysterically from there, Step Brothers flies on the comic chemistry of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly.
Read Full Review
60
Los Angeles Times Sam Adams
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.
Read Full Review
60
Empire Chris Hewitt
It's no Anchorman, but it's several steps in the right direction.
Read Full Review
58
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Reilly is a good foil for Ferrell, but too many of their scenes together have the effect of improv night at the comedy club.
Read Full Review
50
Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
Are Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay getting tired of their own shtick?
Read Full Review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole
A meagre, occasionally funny affair.
Read Full Review
50
Film Threat Mark Bell
Simply, the movie is a tale of extremes resulting in a tepid middleground.
Read Full Review
50
USA Today Claudia Puig
America loves dysfunctional families, but haven't we seen enough middle-aged losers who haven't grown up?
Read Full Review
50
San Francisco Chronicle Reyhan Harmanci
Essentially a throwaway film.
Read Full Review
50
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
The Will Ferrell comedy engine is running on empty in Step Brothers.
Read Full Review
50
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
This is a loud, ugly, foul comedy whose shortcomings extends far into the supporting cast.
Read Full Review
50
Newsweek David Ansen
I don't want to sound like a party pooper (or deny that there is something wickedly funny about seeing these middle-age adolescents beating the crap out of a playground full of little bullying kids) but there's something depressing about the never-ending celebration of eternal adolescence in recent American comedies.
Read Full Review
50
Variety John Anderson
The film is funny at times but lapses into the reflexive vulgarity that seems to be the default mechanism of the Apatow machinery.
Read Full Review
40
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Step Brothers has comic fuel to burn, some of it unashamedly non sequitur and stupid-brilliant, but it still feels like a post-"Talladega" flameout.
Read Full Review
40
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
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.
Read Full Review
40
The New York Times Manohla Dargis
They're losers that only a mother, an entertainment manager or a gang of self-satisfied comedy insiders could love.
Read Full Review
38
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
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.
Read Full Review
38
ReelViews James Berardinelli
Humor is subjective, but this movie made me feel as if I had been subjected to something unpleasant.
Read Full Review
30
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Ferrell and Reilly get more mileage out of juvenile pouting and bickering than any other performers I can imagine, but that's about as far as this goes.
Read Full Review
20
New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
So that's three snickers, not counting the Bush quote, 'cause including that one ain't fair, man.
Read Full Review
0
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
There's a good subject for satire here, the extended adolescence of American kids. But satire presupposes maturity, or at least some perspective. The movie's calculation is that its subjects and audience share the same point of view. The results are truly ghastly.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 7.1 (out of 10) based on 59 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Bil B. gave it a0:
This must have been one of the most painful movie experiences I have ever had the misfortune to put myself through. Forget straight to DVD, this should have gone straight to the trash.

Daniel C. gave it an8:
If you can handle a lot of crude humor, this one is highly recommended.

Jordan R gave it an8:
This movie is a comedy and nothing more. It is perfect for what it is and gets a good laugh, although silly. The Humor is quite low brow and slapstick but does it very well.

Brianna gave it a9:
I thought it was really funny. My family enjoyed it a lot and we would, definitely, all go see it again.

Vid M gave it a9:
HIGH-LARIOUS! This is a stupid, bralinless, awesome comedy.

Tyler D. gave it an8:
I saw this with my brother and at times we were both crying out of laughter. There are some jokes that don't quite reach what they were aiming for, but they're few and far between. One has to wonder how much longer Will Ferrell can keep up the same act, though. Anyways, I highly recommend this to any fan of his previous stuff. It was hilarious.

Jeff G. gave it an8:
More enjoyable than Knocked Up and Superbad combined. Yeah it's the kind of movie critics love to dismiss as infantile and crude, which of course it is. It's also funny. Loved the ending.

Read more user comments...

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