Movies: 'Step Brothers' Is a Step Back | Newsweek Movies

In Defense of Adam Sandler
Ramin Setoodeh 7/30/2009 12:00:00 AM
Is Adam Sandler, the star of the new comedy Funny People, a funny person? It depends on whom you ask. Ever since The Waterboy came out in 1998, Sandler has had one of the best box-office track records in Hollywood. His movies have grossed more than $1.6 billion in the United States, and that says a lot about someone who has made a career out of dialogue like this from Billy Madison: "Of course I peed my pants! ... It's the coolest!"
Dark, With Almost No Sugar
Jennie Yabroff 7/17/2009 12:00:00 AM
Laura's critique could arguably apply to all of Apatow's female characters. Katherine Heigl once called Knocked Up, in which her character gets pregnant after a one-night stand, "a little sexist. It paints the women as shrews … and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys." Because Apatow is the father of the "bromance"—or at least a very close uncle—he's become the whipping boy for the sins of the entire genre. But that's unfair. Take away the sitcom-set colors, the soft-rock soundtracks, and the fart jokes, and you're left with a vision of loneliness, disappointment, and existential despair. His films have less in common with I Love You, Man than they do with Scenes From a Marriage. In fact, you might say that calling Apatow a misogynist is only half right. He's also a misanthrope.
THEATRE
One Word: Stagetegery
Jeremy McCarter 2/7/2009 12:00:00 AM
The squinty eyes, the frat-boy swagger, the barely checked impulse to cram a nerd into a locker: Will Ferrell has brought the glorious details of his Dubya impression to Broadway. In "You're Welcome America: A Final Night With George W. Bush," he offers an 80-minute tour of the ex-president's subtle, subtle mind, right down to piping in songs from the "Top Gun" soundtrack as the audience enters. Drink it in, everybody.
MOVIES
The Laugh Factory
David Ansen 11/1/2008 12:00:00 AM
If a new American comedy starts out with curses that would have made your great-grandmother blush and an obsession with poop and penises just this side of X-rated, you can be sure that it will end as warm and fuzzy as an old Andy Hardy movie. Raunch, scatology and four-letter words are nothing new in Hollywood comedies. They may have begun as underground outrages ("Pink Flamingos"), but by the time of "Porky's," "American Pie" and the Farrelly brothers they were as mainstream as, well, apple pie. What is new is the shotgun wedding of obscenity and sentimentality. If the bad boy-man hero (it's always a guy) seems stuck in the eternal pigpen of adolescence, you can be sure that by the end he'll have learned his lessons, shouldered responsibility and earned the love of the gorgeous, competent woman he pines for.
MOVIES
A ‘Pineapple’ Pot Plot Ploy
Sarah Ball 8/2/2008 12:00:00 AM
How do you hawk a film to a mainstream audience when even the meaning of the title is too illicit to explain? Simple—you make it look like something else. Ads for the new Judd Apatow-produced stoner comedy, the Aug. 6 release "Pineapple Express," shill the movie as an action flick about two dimwitted pals inadvertently swept into a crime thriller. The cleverly edited promos have all the retro stylings of a screwball "Dirty Harry"—Seth Rogen sports polyester lapels while James Franco thwarts grisly bad guys with a Glock and a ninja headband. Only the occasional background wisp of smoke suggests there might be reefer behind that madness.
HOLLYWOOD
The Return of the Sleestak
6/30/2008 12:00:00 AM
Inside a soundstage the size of an airplane hangar in the San Fernando Valley, Marty Krofft gazes around the set of Land of the Lost, marveling at what an army of studio craftsmen can do with $5 million. Outside, it's 95 degrees in the smog. Inside, the air conditioning whirs like a jet high above, jungle vines twist around massive pillars standing sentry over a wide Incan staircase. Two dozen reptile-suited extras meander around Will Ferrell, dressed in khaki and waiting for the camera to roll. Crew members doze on fake rocks. A man comes over with slices of cantaloupe and watermelon.