The film Step Brothers is a brilliant marketing endeavor that has absolutely no redeeming qualities for us as human beings. Admittedly though, to every movie fan that has a strong urge to see Will Ferrell's testicles and is willing to pay nine dollars for that unsettling experience, the film will be remembered for all time. Step Brothers follows the story of Brennan Huff and Dale Doback played, respectively, by Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. Both men are what a materialistic, penis-obsessed society would describe as "losers", since they are both about 40 and still living with their single parents. Even so, both of these man-children are still capable of scoring with beautiful women, so whatever universe Will Ferrell envisions as paradise, must be quite the party.

Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins play the single parents, and they eventually get together for some heated geriatric sex, which almost makes the film worth chuckling at. The rest of the film we're pounded into submission from the usual barrage of arbitrary vitriol, strange 20 million dollar monkey faces, and retarded sight gags. Will Ferrell not only seems to revel in playing soulless, screaming characters, he also seems stuck in a time warp, bizarrely comfortable with the mindset of a 12 year old. John C. Reilly is such a good sport, that he is willing to follow the lead of any actor or director, just as willing to make sexual insults as he is ready to shed a tear in the name of art. Unfortunately, Reilly has no strong comedic presence himself and only works off the attention-starved mania of other comedians. Hence, his best comedic role was in last year's Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, where he tried to keep a straight (stoned) face, while everyone else went bonkers.

What I find hard to believe is that Reilly, who had such balls to walk off Lars Von Trier's Manderlay project because of a murdered donkey, didn't summon the same nerve to walk away from Will Ferrell's cannibalization of scenery. No, Reilly apparently enjoys the humiliation of sabotaging his own acting career, while Ferrell continues to greedily play in his own cinematic feces.

Again, I cannot deny that many moviegoers will find this film beautiful, perhaps some sort of testament to the triumph of human stupidity over responsibility. No doubt, millions of Americans, who are forced to present professional facades to the world on a daily basis, enjoy living vicariously through Will Ferrell and bellowing their angry confusion to the world. No doubt, many people also sympathize with Reilly, as the ultimate enabler of childishness, babysitting a creatively destructive master. If Will Ferrell's ultimate goal is to establish himself as a comedic alpha male then what does that make Reilly? Perhaps a female chimpanzee that empathizes with main monkey Ferrell and cheers on his esoteric rain dance. Whatever, as long Ferrell has the gonads to display his gonads in front of millions of heterosexual people, something has to be right in the world. Grade: D--