Few people in Hollywood can play awkward losers better than Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, so clearly casting can’t be blamed for the lack of laughs. I noticed a light chuckle pass through the audience as the movie started with that old “wings take dream” quote from George W. Bush, but for most of the rest of the movie, the majority of the laughs were coming from the kids, who really shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Will Ferrell, for example, “tea-bags” a drum set in the movie.

I should admit that I find the majority of this American Pie-style humor to be immediately and intensely boring, like seeing someone get kicked in the nuts. In the right situation, such a thing can generate a response, but generally it’s just bonehead toilet humor, and I have come to expect more than that from Ferrell and Reilly.

You may remember that Adam McKay teamed up with Will Ferrell twice before, for Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights, and this is essentially the same film with a different name. The plot is pretty meaningless, as it’s mostly a vehicle for Ferrell and Reilly to conduct some crude skits, like a Saturday Night Live show without the constraints of tv censors. Since all the stops are pulled, the movie overflows with lots of cussing and sex jokes and more cussing.

Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins play Nancy and Robert, who are the unlucky parents of Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (Reilly). Both have a 40 year old loser of a son still living at home and unemployed, and when this causes them to fall in love and get married, suddenly Brennan and Dale find themselves living together and, get this, sharing a room.

Now, there are two ways to make a cookie-cutter comedy like this. One is to have the guys just be lazy couch potatoes too irresponsible to get off their asses and find a job and get a freaking life (note: that’s the one that will make a better movie), or you could just have the two lead characters be 40-year-old children.

Unfortunately, Step Brothers chooses the latter. Brennan and Dale are essentially 10-year-old kids, but we’re supposed to fall over laughing because they’re 40. They collect action figures, get grounded, sleep in their jammies, receive spankings while bent over daddy’s knee, cry at the dinner table, and get beaten up by groups of schoolkids. Real ones.

I would be lying if I said the movie was completely devoid of laughs, but I’d also be lying if I said the movie was funny. There are a few chuckles (one of the job interview scenes has an amusing moment in it, thanks to a brief cameo by Seth Rogen, who I recommend you go see in Pineapple Express rather than wasting your time with this), but the majority of the movie is too obviously an excuse for a lot of sick jokes and bodily noises. No thanks.

The relationship between their parents is also a totally separate soap opera drama that seems completely out of place in this movie except for their occasional bouts of wild profanity. Their disintegrating marriage is so seriously presented that it’s even harder to laugh at any of the tasteless comedy.

This might be a good rental on a Saturday night when you’re hanging out at home getting drunk with your buddies, but any laughs you get in the theater will soon be lost when you remember that you spent $11 to see it…