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

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.
THE TECHNOLOGIST
The Tears of a Clown
Jennifer Ordoñez
In a recent episode of "South Park," the show's young cartoon protagonists need to raise some money quickly. Their three-part business plan: Film their nerdiest friend—the terminally earnest Leopold (Butters) Stotch—singing and dancing lasciviously. Post the footage on the Internet. Make bank. Everything goes as planned—their video gets millions of hits. But when the gang heads down to the Department of Internet Money to collect their presumptive bounty (joining a long queue of the Web's biggest video stars, including Cute Sneezing Panda, Laughing Baby and Dramatic-Looking Gopher), they learn they have struck fool's gold. Their check for $10 million is in "theoretical" dollars.
THE ABC’S OF W
Another Player Signs Up for the Bush Leagues

It's almost time for President Bush to pack his things, and Hollywood will miss him. Production begins this week on "W," a biopic about the president directed by Oliver Stone—so you know it will be a subtle love letter of a film. Stone's "W" is being played by "No Country for Old Men" star Josh Brolin (left), who seems kind of hunky for the part, at least compared with the competition: