Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in Step Brothers.
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If you get on their wavelength, the functioning world is the one operating on false values. In Step Brothers that world is represented by Brennan's brother Derek (Adam Scott), a preener and underminer whose sabotaging of a Brennan musical performance back in high school was our hero's defining trauma. Now Derek has a couple of kids so impeccable, they hardly appear in the movie, and a wife, Alice (Kathryn Hahn), whose cooped-up loathing of Derek propels her into the loins of a very surprised Dale. But Derek is just here as the villain, and Alice to wean Dale out of babyhood. The main thrust is to propel Brennan and Dale from torpor to triumph, from don't-invite-ems to can't-do-without-ems.
Here we go again: the boy-meets-boy love story, the bro-mance. The guys are obliged to hate each other, then love each other, then be separated and reunited. Whatever my reservations about the Apatow-sponsored bro-mances, I have to admit that they know what they're about and aren't shy proclaiming it. In Knocked Up, two frustrated guys get away from their women and have a grand time in Vegas: a quickie affair (without the sex) between people who really like each other. In Superbad the horny teen-boys literally end up in the sack together.
When a grown women (like the Catherine Keener character in The 40 Year Old Virgin) approaches an Apatow hero, she'll often induce not passion but panic attacks, and need to take the lead, be aggressive, help him learn how to cope in the land beyond his obsessions and fears. (In Step Brothers Alice has that job, and she assumes it with missionary zeal.) Women are the Other to these six-foot kids. Inside, the Apatow movies say, men are really lost boys looking for a Wendy. Or, ever better, another Peter Pan — a rebellious youth who'll never grow up.
That's Dale to Brennan and Brennan to Dale. Even in their hate phase, they're more alive assaulting each other with rakes and golf clubs, or instituting a premature burial, than they ever were alone, sitting home masturbating to the exercise lady on TV. The lightbulb of enlightenment clicks on: we'll smack each other silly, and then we'll channel our rage into the vanquishing of our enemies. The little guy will defeat the big guy; the child will vanquish the adult.
One way to achieve that succulent victory, Step Brothers says, is by singing the Andrea Bocelli Por Ti Volare, accompanied by a drum solo. Even a grump has to admit it. That made me laugh.