GAMES: GameSpot | GameFAQs MUSIC: Last.fm | MP3.com MOVIES: Metacritic | Movietome TV: TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Step Brothers
Columbia Pictures (Sony)

Step Brothers reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 51 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
6.8 out of 10
based on 33 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 84 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: DVD: December 2, 2008 
Theatrical: July 25, 2008 
RUNNING TIME: 95 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 6.8 (out of 10) based on 84 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

k k gave it a0:
Wow, bad, and i loved talladega nights.

Tom P gave it a1:
Not including the three minutes of The Love Guru I could tolerate, this is probably one of the worst comedies I have ever seen, It's more predictable than the worst Adam Sandler movies, witholding the times when something that is beyond random, in the most unfunny way imaginable was thrown in. (Dale's affair with Brennan's brother's wife comes to mind) Friends of mine hyped this movie up, claiming it was better than Superbad and Pineapple Express, and I sat through the whole movie turning to another friend, both of us wondering when something even mildly entertaining was going to happen. I believe I smiled a few times at best. Every other moment was a painful waste of time.

shaun m gave it a10:
This may be the funniest movie I have ever seen!!! watched it twice in a row and laughed just as hard

Bobo Bobo gave it a0:
No matter what your IQ, Step Brothers is guaranteed to insult your intelligence.

Cody P. gave it a10:
This was a great movie and if you don't enjoy the movie you have to check to see if you have a pulse this is down right halirous.

Dan C. gave it a0:
Truly terrible. Shockingly bad. Horrifically unfunny, with rare exceptions. Also, surprisingly mean-spiried, nasty, and "woman-hating" (and I'm a man saying this, not a reactionary hyper-feminist). Vulgar without being funny, which is the worst sin a comedy can commit. I've really enjoyed both lead actors' work in the past, so the awfulness of this was a real shock. 98 minutes of your life that you will never get back, and will regret having spent with this atrocity. I would award negative stars if that were possible.

Bill K gave it an8:
While I can enjoy Will Ferrel in his comedy's, I usually prefer to wait until they're on DVD. Step Brothers, however, I think was worthy of a full price admission to the theater! I think it was one of his very best. My favorite character/actor in the film HAD to be Will Ferrel's sister-in-law... I don't know the characters name nor the actresses name, but the scene where she first "opens up" to Will Ferrel's character is hysterical! And, her character and acting is superb through out the film!

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: iPhone 3G | Fantasy Football | Moneywatch | Antivirus Software | Recipes | E3 2009

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use