Jeremy’s Tophunder №44: Step Brothers

7 min readMay 3, 2020

What a gloriously, hysterically stupid movie.

Step Brothers seems like the logical extension of the Adam McKay/Will Ferrell universe of movies. In Anchorman and Talladega Nights, they made movies about grown men in the adult world acting like childish buffoons. So obviously, the only place to go after that was to make a movie about the relationship between two actual children, and then just casting two 40-year olds to play them.

The conceit of the movie is inherently funny to me, and it probably always will be. One middle-aged man-child with Peter Pan Syndrome is funny enough, but having a second one, and then forcing the two of them together is pure comedy gold. Probably 80 percent of the interactions that Ferrell and John C. Reilly have in the movie could be transferred word-for-word into a movie about two 12-year olds that become unwilling Step Brothers/roommates. But, instead of being 12, they’re 40. I really wish I knew why this was so funny to me, but for whatever reason, the pure idea of the movie itself makes me laugh all by itself.

While the whole movie is laugh-out-loud funny, nothing is quite as good as the opening 15 minutes or so. There’s Will Ferrell saying he won’t call Richard Jenkins’ character dad (even if there’s a fire!) and claiming to have smoked weed with Johnny Hopkins and Sloan Kettering. The whole scene at dinner that first night in the house is fantastic, but maybe my biggest laugh in the whole movie comes when Reilly makes fun of one of Ferrell’s jokes and Ferrell looks like he’s about to cry.

Trust me when I tell you that there really are no bad scenes in this movie. The boys lose TV for a week and can’t handle it, which runs right into the first sleeping-walking scene, which runs right into Derek’s introduction with his family singing a capella in the car, and there are plenty of laughs to be had when Derek comes over for dinner and Reilly punches him in the face.

Oh, and by the way, that’s still only the first half-hour of the movie.

The story of how Step Brothers came to be is one of my favorites that I’ve researched as a part of this project. It was originally supposed to be just a throw-away idea that McKay and Ferrell made for fun, maybe for a Funny or Die sketch. The idea started with just “two adult men sharing a bunk bed,” and went from there. After filming Talladega Nights, which was a rather grueling shoot on extremely hot and extremely loud racetracks, McKay and Ferrell and Reilly just wanted to do something easy. That’s where the idea came from. As the three of them got together and started to riff, they realized they might have an entire movie to make out of this one stupid idea.

Part of the genius in the movie is the supporting cast. Mary Steenburgen (Nancy Huff) won an Oscar in 1980. Richard Jenkins was nominated for one in 2008 (and would go on to be nominated again in 2017). He was also critically acclaimed for his work on HBO’s Six Feet Under. Getting two accomplished serious actors to play Mom & Dad was a stroke of genius, and Jenkins and Steenburgen fit right in with the zany, improvisational style that McKay and Ferrell and Reilly all thrive on. Jenkins is absolutely brilliant in the movie, going on a wild ride of emotions. He starts as an older guy resigned to the reality of being single and living with his adult son, only to be suddenly full of hope when he meets Nancy. That hope quickly erodes as his son and step-son fail to live up to even the lowest baseline of expectations, and finally hope disappears and is replaced by furious rage when Dale & Brennan destroy his boat. He then gets divorced and the rage is replaced by depression, only for hope to be resurrected at the fuckin’ Catalina Wine Mixer. Really, this movie could be about Robert Doback, and I wouldn’t even be mad.

Adam Scott also steals the show for a few scenes. You might not remember it now, because he’s made a name for himself from comedies like Parks & Recreation and Party Down, but he was really an unknown quantity back in 2008. He just hadn’t done a lot of comedy. He got the part on the recommendation of Paul Rudd and Judd Apatow, who had worked with him on Knocked Up (where he had a small role), and ended up being cast for Step Brothers over McKay’s other top choice — Jon Hamm.

Kathryn Hahn is also amazing. She had a small (but hilarious) role in Anchorman, and has since gotten a lot more recognition for her comedy chops, but she brought a really great energy to her role as Adam Scott’s wife that I wasn’t really expecting at the time. She’s the perfect combination of pathetic, raunchy, desperate, and just out of her mind crazy. It’s one of those characters where I really, genuinely want to know more backstory. I want to know exactly how she ended up with Derek, and at what point down the line did she become so miserable in her marriage — miserable enough that Dale punching Derek in the face and knocking him out of a treehouse was enough to make her fall in love with him. I really want to know more about this stuff.

The driving arc of the movie, really, is the effort that the guys go to in order to get Prestige Worldwide off the ground. And honestly, all things considered, I think they did a pretty good job. I mean, for two 40-year olds with no real musical or film production skills, the music video they put together is actually really impressive. They have multiple cuts to new camera angles, and in the finished product, they did a nice job editing out the boat crash that ultimately submarined their dreams.

The editor on the movie, Brent White, is somewhat of a legend in the comedy community. He’s collaborated frequently with McKay and Apatow, as well as Paul Feig, and he almost exclusively edits improv-heavy comedy movies, like Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, Knocked Up, Funny People, This Is 40, The Heat, Spy, and the 2016 re-make of Ghostbusters. Obviously some of those movies are better than others, but the amount of improvising and re-writing that happens during filming must make for a nightmare of a job for the editor. Not only are there probably dozens of different takes that all have hysterical (but different) lines of dialogue, but things just go so far up the wall so quickly that it must also be near-impossible to re-assemble everything into a coherent story. With Step Brothers, in particular, the task was daunting.

The first-draft script for Step Brothers was said to have come in around 180 pages (which would translate into roughly a three hour movie), and while the shooting script was obviously much shorter, Adam McKay has said that during production, they shot about 1.5 million feet of film. Editor Brent White said he could have cut a four-hour movie if he had wanted to. I really hope that he did actually cut a four-hour movie, and it’s just hidden somewhere in Sony’s archives. I want to see that movie.

I also have to talk about the movie’s spectacular climax.

It is, once again, two adults, acting like children, acting like adults. But somehow, it’s brilliant and moving. Like, actually moving. I -almost- teared up while I watched it. Academy Award-winning actress Marion Cotillard has publicly said that she’s seen the movie 10 times and it makes her weep every time. There’s something going on in this scene that goes way beyond two weird man-child dudes being idiots. I just wish I knew what it is. But it makes me feel — something. It’s legitimately beautiful. It’s another hint that Adam McKay drops for us to let us know that he’s actually a really good director.

Like, it almost makes me mad that a movie this abjectly stupid can tug at my heartstrings this way. But it does. The scene is simultaneously hilarious and heartfelt. The song is beautiful, and Ferrell is actually a decent singer. It’s a great ending to the movie.

Step Brothers is one of the highest-ranked comedies on my list, because it really has everything. It’s mind-blowingly stupid, but it’s stupid in the smartest ways. It has Adam McKay and Will Ferrell at or near their very bests, and it has a superlative supporting cast. It’s funny in absolutely every scene, and most of those laughs are still there even on the 47th viewing. I was late to the party on Step Brothers, for sure. I didn’t see it until several years after its release, and didn’t truly appreciate it until the last few years or so. But it’s become one of the most re-watchable comedies I can think of. I love comedies that I can re-watch over and over again, because sometimes I just need a good laugh. Step Brothers fills that void really well, and that’s why it’s my 44th-favorite movie of all time.

(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)

Here’s our progress on the list so far:

2. A Few Good Men

4. Dazed and Confused

6. The Fugitive

7. The Dark Knight

9. Saving Private Ryan

11. The Big Short

13. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

15. Skyfall

17. Ocean’s 11

18. Air Force One