So “Step Brothers” was retarded, but kind of awesome, right? In fact, the more and more we watch scenes that have leaked onto YouTube or deleted scenes (“It’s the fucking Catalina wine mixer“!) we kind of shy away from the fact that the film is pure mentally-challenged juvenalia and just enjoy the film for simply how absurd and funny it is. Despite the low-grade we gave it, in retrospect it’s feeling like our favorite comedy for the summer (let’s face it, “Pineapple Express” was kind of a disappointment).
Well, despite what critics are saying – Roger Ebert for example had a near apoplectic stroke over just how idiotic the film was and exclaimed aloud to the heavens, “Sometimes I think I am living in a nightmare!” – audiences are responding to the film quietly, but in droves.
The story of the summer so far comedy wise is either “Tropic Thunder” or “Pineapple Express” (the larger story soon is how ‘Thunder’ is going to be seen as a box-office bomb financially), but no one’s really talking “Step Brothers.” The Will Ferrell/John C. Reilly comedy directed by Adam McKay and co-produced by Judd Apatow isn’t getting a lot of ink, but guess what? The film has already grossed almost $91 million and that’s not counting any foreign box-office receipts yet.
“Step Brothers” opened to an impressive $31 million (higher than both ‘Thunder’ [$26 mil] and ‘Pineapple’s [$22 mil] opening weekend cumes], has been in the box-office top 10 for five weeks and should easily break the $100 million mark meaning it will outgross “You Don’t Mess With Zohan” domestically (scoff all you want, Adam Sandler’s comedy made $99 million in the U.S. plus an additional $29 million world-wide). Whether it can beat ‘Zohan’ world wide remains to be seen, but it doesn’t appear like it has opened internationally yet.
As Variety says, the comedy is like “The crazy uncle in the attic – no one wants to acknowledge its presence in the marketplace, let alone its success.”
“Pineapple Express” still has a shot at being as successful if not moreso since it cost less than any of these summer comedies, but at $62 million total, it still has a few weeks to prove whether it has the legs.
You know we actually really liked “You Don’t Mess With Zohan” too, it might have been one of the more purely stupidly enjoyable comedies we’ve seen this year, but we’ll leave that for another post before you start throwing tomatoes.