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Dir. Adam McKay

Rating: 4.0  |  0 User Reviews  |  Send to Friend

By Scott Hesel

The Will Ferrell man-child character is back again, but by now, the concept has been beaten so far into the ground that it's beginning to approach Adam Sandler territory.  Fresh off the flop of Semi-Pro, this effort is an attempt to re-unite Ferrell with writer/director Adam McKay and co-star John C. Riley, the combination that produced the far-funnier Talladega Nights, Ferrell’s last acclaimed big-screen comedy. But while Ferrell and Riley buoyed the stupidity of their characters with hilariously cocksure personas in Nights, here, their roles are just plain stupid. In essence, while it may be at least a little amusing  to watch a Ferrell-based character hit the iceberg during the course of a well-scripted movie, it is absolutely painful to watch a whole film of his character as a sunken ship. The script casts Ferrell and Riley as two late-thirties losers who still live at home. They are brought together under one roof when their single parents (played by Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) marry each other. Plenty of room is allowed for Ferrell and Riley to riff, and there are some funny bits, among them a few sleep-walking sequences that really bring out the physical talents of the two stars. Most of the film, however, is just a competition between Riley and Ferrell to produce the most infantile jokes possible; all vulgarity and dick gags: Imagine the cads of Apatow films without a shred of the wit or self-consciousness. The film also makes it very apparent that the two stars need a foil character to balance the out the crudeness. Unfortunately, neither Steenburgen or Jenkins are really up to the task; they look as if they are laboring through the admittedly one-note material. Perhaps the best method for re-harnessing the magic of Ferrell's earlier comedies is to anchor him with a talented comedic ensemble cast, as in the aforementioned Nights and also Anchorman, rather than pair him with an equally zany co-star and an underdeveloped script. Both Ferrell and Riley are more talented than this.

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