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The comedic super team of Mckay and Ferrell are back for another round in their man-child comedy series. The director/actor duo who brought us films like Anchorman and Talladega Nights take their mentally regressed male protagonists to a more literal, realistic and vulgar world in Step Brothers, which re-teams Will Ferrell with Talladega Nights co-star John C. Reilly. The film surprisingly works and in a way seems to be poking fun at the reputation the duo has earned over the years.

The film centers around two 40-year-old men, Brennan Huff (Ferrell) and Dale Doback (Reilly), who absolutely refuse to grow up. Neither has a job, they both live at home with their respective single parent, and each peruse very childish endeavors and artifacts including tree houses, samurai swords, a vintage porno mag collection and night vision goggles. When the two men’s parents randomly meet each other and fall in love, they are forced to live together in the same house as step brothers. This plot is so weak, if it were any two other actors no one would bother seeing the film let alone sit through near two hours of this insanity. Luckily Mckay and Ferrell, the films writers, understand this and don’t bother with plot. The audience is there for the interaction between Ferrell and Reilly and the story wastes no time getting there by knocking out the crucial element of getting the men in the same house in the first ten minutes.

I’m reminded of old Godzilla movies or even really bad B horror films when I see Mckay and Ferrell films. These old school flicks knew people were in the theater to see Godzilla stomp a building or see a random zombie eat a brain…not the plot or story. Seeing Ferrell and Reilly engage and play off of each other in this comedy is just this: a spectacle. That said, the film is hilarious if you are not too self conscious, can temporarily embrace the childish vulgarity being pelted to you from the screen. This outing for Mckay and Ferrell is much more obscene, garnishing the first R rating for the duo. In the fight to be the supreme step brother, the two go below the belt many times: gigantic Will Ferrell testicles on a drum set, awkward sex scenes, fart jokes and the word “fuck” which is used more than the word “the” [actually I have no proof of this, but it felt that way].

I could be a stiff and not laugh at all of this, but it is funny in its execution and absurdity; and in a way this film is very smart and subversive. Ferrell and Mckay have been for years criticized for their adolescent humor similar to Adam Sandler. And while Sandler has taken on “serious” roles to legitimize and rectify his image, it seems in Step Brothers that Mckay and Ferrell are going the complete opposite route and making their humor more vulgar and more juvenile as to completely isolate the critic. In the end, Mckay and Ferrell follow in the great legacy of the Sex Pistols by putting the joke on the critic or the snob who is too pretentious to have a laugh. The two main characters in the film Dale and Brennan refuse to, or possibly cannot, grow up and in the end come to accept their immaturity. So it seems then these characters are meant to represent Ferrell and Mckay, two modern day auteur of fart jokes, trash and B-rate comedies, who refuse to man-up and be boring.