what i watched last week

Step Brothers (Adam McKay, 2008). I don’t know how many times I can go down the same path: why don’t I like modern comedies? My latest theory is that I want something with a setup. Laurel and Hardy were masters at this. First they’d set up a situation where you could see in advance what was likely to happen. Then it would happen. Then it would happen a couple more times. I laugh at the set up … I laugh at the payoff … I laugh at the repeat performance. (TV shows like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm are also good in this regard, at times setting up a joke in one season that doesn’t get resolved until a subsequent season.) None of this happens in a movie like Step Brothers, which is all concept and no set up. Two new step brothers hate each other. They fight. They fight some more. Some of the fights are funnier than some of the others, but it doesn’t really matter, which is why the best thing about modern comedies is usually the previews, where they can show all the good stuff in under five minutes. These kinds of comedies are not influenced by the silent greats like Keaton … they aren’t influenced by the verbal pyrotechnics of the screwball comedies … no, the primary influence for these movies is the Three Stooges. And I suppose I should trade in my I Am a Man card, but I’ve never really gotten the Three Stooges, either. To top it all off, Step Brothers has a happy ending that is barely ironic, if it’s ironic at all. The only thing the film has going for it is its bad attitude. The last thing it needs is to cave in with a happy ending. Step Brothers is about as good as Napoleon Dynamite, another movie about misfits where all of the comedy comes from its premise (he’s a geek) and there are no surprises except he can dance. At least Napoleon is a teenager … the step brothers are 40 years old, and once you know that (and, if you think it’s funny, laugh), the film does nothing with it.

Wedding Crashers (David Dobkin, 2005). Now this is more like it. If I could figure out why I liked Wedding Crashers and didn’t like Step Brothers, I could quit obsessing. Both are about adult men who are a bit too much in touch with their adolescent selves, but while the step brothers are cartoons (they aren’t adults who haven’t grown up, they’re kids in adult bodies), Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are recognizable adult men with adolescent streaks. It’s a much bigger difference than it sounds, and it makes Wedding Crashers far less stupid than Step Brothers. Wedding Crashers isn’t perfect … it goes on too long, and while in some ways it’s odd enough to rank as a screwball comedy, with an eccentric family and some very unusual characters, in other ways it’s too conventional. Wilson and Vaughn are not my favorite actors … in both cases, their biggest “asset” seems to be that they are annoying, which among other things prevents me from appreciating what is good about Vaughn (I can barely stand to watch him). But they are actually not screwy enough here. Still, in the early scenes of them crashing weddings, you see a ribald joy in their performances. Even though they go to the weddings to get laid, they also have a great time while they are there, perhaps a better time than the people who are supposed to be there. Meanwhile, Isla Fisher is loony in a ha-ha funny way, and Rachel McAdams is beautiful.