Step Brothers

After much debate, I decided to attend and review a recent movie. The movie I saw was in fact so recent that it is still playing at the Cineplex. The movie was Step Brothers starring Will Farrell and John Reilly as 40 year old dudes living at home with their single parents who meet, get married and move in together. As you might have guessed, zaniness ensues and the popular Hollywood formula of "event leads to tension - tension leads to friendship - easily foreseeable event wrecks friendship - easily foreseeable event saves friendship" plays out before the viewers very eyes.

For all of our loyal readers out there I would like to provide some insight into the current state of the movie theater business. Forget how much everything costs (we all know it is ridiculous), did anyone realize that they now are showing commercials prior to the movie? Shouldn't I have been warned about this by the fifteen year old kids who sold me a ticket and some corn? I did enjoy the fact that the commercials they forced upon me were really poorly done and awful. At one point I think they just started showing pictures from the Auto Trader magazine. I don't know the pricing structure for movie commercials, but if you have to resort to having the kid running the projector hold your ad in front of the lens...you may not be spending enough on advertising!

Speaking of Auto Trader, I was recently spending some quality time at a Shell gas station in the middle of nowhere and studied this magazine very carefully. I think Congress should mandate some tougher standards on the use of "low mileage." Every car in the magazine was listed as having "low mileage" but their actual mileages were all over the board. I saw a Fiat that was headed as "Low Mileage Fiat, Mint." When I read through the 8 two-word phrases used to describe the car I also saw "68,757 miles." On this planet, 68,757 miles is not "low." It should also be noted that when girls weigh 225 they should not describe themselves as "athletic."

If I owned a movie theater I would list all of the movie starting times as 15 minutes before the movie actually starts. Every time I go to a movie there are always five or six knuckleheads that shuffle into the theater ten minutes into the show. These folks proceed to walk up the stairs of the theater loudly asking each other "do you see two?" while pointing at every empty seat in the middle of a row. When they finally choose their seats they always have to turn off their phone (with the unnecessary chimes and rings that entails) and open the diet coke and something sealed in cellophane that they obviously brought from home.

The movie itself was just OK. This seemed like a funny idea for a Saturday Night Live skit that ran about 45 minutes too long. John Reilly was really funny in this movie as Dale Doback. I am sure that every movie review(er) has already pointed this out but Will Farrell is just playing the same character over and over with a new song for the soundtrack. I think he went to the George Lucas movie seminar they offer at University of Southern California Community College whereby you develop an idea only enough to get an exciting preview commercial, re-record one song to sell the soundtrack, and release the movie in every possible configuration (VHS, DVD, Unrated, Super Unrated, Director's Cut, Bonus Material, Laser Disc, Super 8).

There were some genuinely funny parts to this film. I especially laughed at the job interview scenes (although they were mostly the same as the preview commercial), the building of the bunk beds (again, mostly the same as the preview commercial) and the judo practice on pumpkins. One thing that I could have done without was all of the cursing. I will be the first to admit that I enjoy some salty language as much as the next guy (I don't know if this will come off in a blog but I just cursed out loud...there I did it again) but this movie just had too much of it. I know that we all get some special satisfaction out of seeing a parent-type figure, someone who seems professional and innocent, throw down some f-bombs, but there was no build up to this satisfaction in Step Brothers. Everyone in the movie was cursing early and often. I really felt like some of this language distracted from the funny lines in the movie.

To wrap this one up with a tight little bow, I will just say "Step Brothers, low mileage, f#%$!"

Warren