51
Metascore
33 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80Village VoiceVillage VoiceNot to wax too serious here (since this is, after all, a movie in which two nearly middle-aged men beat each other over the heads with blunt instruments on their front lawn), but ticking away just beneath Step Brothers' freely associative surface is a fairly astute commentary on how we define such abstract concepts as "growing up" and "making something of yourself."
- 80Washington PostStephen HunterWashington PostStephen HunterSo childish it seems to arrive in diapers, and that's not bad; it's good.
- 75Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanStep Brothers is a Judd Apatow production and it's the closest that the Apatow factory has come to spitting out a dumb-and-dumber high-concept comedy.
- 75Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaPhiladelphia InquirerSteven ReaWhile Ferrell and Reilly are great together, hatching harebrained schemes that have no basis in reality, part of the unexpected treat of Step Brothers is watching Jenkins and Steenburgen sink to such blithely immature levels of rude and crude comedy.
- 75PremierePremiereStep Brothers is a hard R, for good reason. While it's somewhat sweeter, if you will, than a typical Apatow flick, the ludicrous situations call for equally ludicrous behavior and statements.
- 63Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsChicago TribuneMichael PhillipsStupid, predictable and fairly funny.
- 50NewsweekDavid AnsenNewsweekDavid AnsenI don't want to sound like a party pooper (or deny that there is something wickedly funny about seeing these middle-age adolescents beating the crap out of a playground full of little bullying kids) but there's something depressing about the never-ending celebration of eternal adolescence in recent American comedies.
- 50VarietyVarietyThe film is funny at times but lapses into the reflexive vulgarity that seems to be the default mechanism of the Apatow machinery.
- 40Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAustin ChronicleMarc SavlovStep Brothers has comic fuel to burn, some of it unashamedly non sequitur and stupid-brilliant, but it still feels like a post-"Talladega" flameout.
- 38Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertIn Step Brothers, the language is simply showing off by talking dirty. It serves no comic function, and just sort of sits there in the air, making me cringe.