Step Brothers (Adam McKay, 2008) Cert.15

Will Ferrell just seems to move from strength to strength. Stranger Than Fiction was generally well received by critics, Blades of Glory was an enjoyable piece of mindless fun, while Anchorman, along with Ferrell's alter-ego Ron Burgundy, has become something of a cult comedy classic amongst a lot of young people, with memorably ludicrous scenes and extremely quotable lines. The fact that a friend of mine, after making the comment ‘it’s so hot!’ in a nightclub bathroom, clearly heard a voice from a cubicle reply ‘milk was a bad choice!’ shows just what an impact Ferrell has made on the modern comedy circuit. So is his latest outing, Step Brothers another step towards comedic immortality? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Not by a long shot.

Step Brothers, also starring John C. Reilly a.k.a. Dewey Cox, features the two comic stars as a pair of loutish, unemployed thirty-somethings who mooch off their single parents, dad Robert (Richard Jenkins) and mum Nancy (Mary Steenburgen). When, during the film’s opening, the two parents meet, hook up and decide to marry, Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (Reilly) are forced to confront one another and accept their roles as step brothers. Such a plot-line seems perfect for low-key comedy, with the two spoiled slobs being forced to get used to one another’s presence and habits. However, a major flaw in writer/director Adam Mckay's formula is that Brennan and Dale aren’t just immature. They’re presented as hyper-active kids in adult bodies, mugging at the camera and hurling things around. This approach immediately dumbs down the film’s material and makes Ferrell and Reilly's attempts at humour much more difficult to appreciate.

To me, Step Brothers seems like a children’s film, but packed with enough swearing to give it a 15 certificate. I’m sure a young audience would greatly appreciate the sight of Ferrell and Reilly clowning around, pulling faces at the dinner table and getting bullied by school kids. But this kind of juvenile humour is totally lost on a sophisticated adult audience for whom fart jokes and slapstick have a very limited appeal. Not even the dialogue can save this film from what it immediately brands itself to be. The witty, part-improvised ramblings that made the films of Judd Appatow, such as The 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up so popular, fail to appear in the Step Brothers script. Instead the writers seem to think that by randomly placing the word ‘penis’ within a sentence, laughs will be raised. They aren’t. The remarks that escape Ferrell and Reilly’s lips are more along the lines of; 'I feel like a lightning bolt just struck the end of my penis' and 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but I'm gonna kick you repeatedly in the balls'. That’s about as witty as it gets. Not that there aren’t some funny moments in the film; a sleepwalking scene raises a few smiles and a bunk-bed accident is nothing short of hilarious, but mostly the jokes are completely unsuccessful.

Also, the narrative never really seems to know where its going. The film loses steam when Brennan and Dale decide to become friends instead of enemies, though they continue to misbehave, causing stress and desperation for their parents. The mother is inexplicably patient and understanding with the destructive pair for the entirety of the film, while the father all but disowns them, though, equally inexplicably, takes an immediate shine to Brennan’s older brother Derek (Adam Scott) a high-flying businessman who is presented to us as a totally one-dimensional character with no positive qualities whatsoever. Slightly confusing but, sadly, it gets much worse. After the destructive duo accidentally destroy father Robert's beloved yacht, the two parental characters decide to separate and find their own personal space, leaving Brennan and Dale to fend for themselves. During their first night home alone, they randomly attack one another, a conflict that escalates to the point that Dale drags a seemingly dead Brennan into the garden with the intentions of burying him alive. Until Brennan wakes up, knocks Dale out with a shovel and then starts to bury him alive. Dale later bursts out of the ground, having apparently been fully buried for some time, and the fight continues. The whole sequence makes literally no sense.

Thankfully, the pair eventually decide to settle down, go their own separate ways and, at long last, grow up. Brennan ends up working for his arrogant brother Derek in events management, while Dale becomes a successful caterer. It all seems like a happy, sensible ending to a juvenile, nonsensical film, until the pair meet up at a wine-tasting festival organised by Brennan and catered for by Dale. The parents Nancy and Robert, also show up but, bizarrely are not impressed by the success of their children. Instead they seem to bemoan the fact that they have forced them to act their age and long for the old, juvenile versions. Cue a cringingly over-the-top resolution that sees Brennan and Dale cast away their hard-earned success and become wild, annoying slobs again, dragging the entire narrative mercilessly back to square one and thus making the entire film completely and utterly pointless.

Overall, a disastrous mess with none of the fun or wit that made Ferrell as popular as he is. Tedious, juvenile and ridiculous, not to mention deeply unfunny. Without a doubt, one to avoid. 2.5/10

Hellboy II : The Golden Army (Guillermo Del Toro, 2008) Cert.12a

After the massive critical success of Del Toro's recent masterpiece, Pan's Labyrinth, and the promises that this sequel to the boisterous fantasy-thriller Hellboy will be the most impressive English-language movie the director has produced so far, Golden Army is a film that you desperately want to be impressed by. And in many ways, Hellboy II is every bit as impressive as Del Toro's fans could have hoped for. The lavish sets, rich colour pallet and imaginative creatures reflect everything that made Pan's Labyrinth such a wonder to watch. However, in a number of ways, it could be argued that Del Toro's latest offers nothing but disappointment.

One of the great assets of Hellboy as a superhero movie is that it remains mercifully tongue-in-cheek. Unlike the well-known Marvel heroes such as Spiderman, Hellboy never takes itself too seriously, Del Toro treating it exactly as it is; a piece of mindless entertainment. Thus, when the film opens with a miniature red devil in pyjamas watching an episode of Howdee-Doodee (a cringingly twee image), we can't really identify it as a flaw because it was never intended to be anything other than 'a bit of fun'. We certainly have no reason for complaint when this scene is followed by a hugely imaginative sequence in which the events of a great legend, as told by John Hurt, unfold in young Hellboy's mind. The story of man versus elf, which shortly becomes the main narrative, is portrayed in the form of wooden puppets reminiscent of Howdee-Doodee, the character that Hellboy has just been watching. The sequence, a bloodthirsty one, is void of any real violence due to this substitution. It conveys childish innocence and, crucially, means that the captivating fantasy creatures are not properly seen until later in the film.

This is undoubtedly a smart move as the most obvious improvement Golden Army holds above the original Hellboy is its vastly increased cast of striking and grotesque beasts. So to delay their emergence is to keep the audience glued to the screen in anticipation, which does not go unrewarded - the characters introduced throughout Golden Army are some of the most majestic and nightmarish creations to ever be portrayed onscreen. The elves, headed by the villainous Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), look as though they are made of cracked ivory - delicate yet deadly; Johann Krauss, a new protagonist voiced by Family Guy's Seth McFarlane, is a mechanical humanoid housing the spirit of a witty German professor; the Angel of Death, much like the monstrous Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth, has an element of obscene beauty about it; and the much-loved Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) enjoys a greatly increased role. Even the Tooth-fairies, harmless-looking pixies that swarm and devour their prey en masse, have a darkly comic appeal reminiscent of the flesh-eating scarab beetles that made The Mummy so memorably disturbing.

But impressive creatures alone cannot save what is ultimately a flawed and clearly rushed narrative. Del Toro attempts to juggle two separate stories; that of the elf prince Nuada's onslaught against the humans, and Hellboy's (Ron Perlman) internal struggle for acceptance with his pyrotechnic wife (Selma Blair) and the human society he battles to protect, with little success. Stunning characters such as the Angel of Death are pushed to the sidelines and given the bare minimum of time onscreen, the final battle between good and evil ends before it truly begins and the ultimate 'twist' that sees the downfall of Nuada is far too predictable. Hellboy himself remains boorish and arrogant, making him a thoroughly alienating protagonist and Del Toro blatantly overdoes it on the aforementioned 'tongue-in-cheek-ness', grasping for comedy at every opportunity. Thus such scenes as Hellboy and Sapien drunkenly singing Barry Manilow's 'Can't Smile Without You' in between sequences of battle and carnage, appear horrendously misjudged.

All in all, a disappointing outing, especially with regard to the excitement that preceded it. However, despite its flaws, of which there are many, Hellboy II : The Golden Army, remains a visually impressive piece of work, containing every imaginative element that has helped Del Toro to achieve his much-deserved auteur status. An improvement on the original Hellboy, we can only hope the saga will continue to improve. 7.5/10