To me, Will Ferrell is easily the funniest comedian of the last ten or fifteen years. I followed him closely through his brilliant Saturday Night Live years, through second-banana roles in Old School (where he stole the movie from the bigger stars), and on to wild success as the star of films like Elf and Anchorman. Admittedly, I’m a little biased; Ferrell could stand there with a straight face and make me laugh.

Clearly, the creators of Step Brothers are counting on such audience goodwill, because it contains nothing but a stream of random Ferrell-isms tied together with the thinnest strand of sense.

The film barely deserves recollection. Ferrell plays Brennan, a thirty-nine year-old moron who still lives with his mother Nancy (Mary Steenburgen, warm and wasted). John C. Reilly plays Dale, a forty year-old doofus who still lives with his father. And wouldn’t ya know? The mother and father move in together, forcing these two rejects to share a room and test the sanity of everyone around them.

This film exists for only one reason: Ferrell and Reilly have potent comedic chemistry, and this is designed to let them run and improvise to their hearts content. The film, apparently script-free, allows both actors to mug endlessly for the camera, shock with ridiculous and disgusting sight gags, and retread jokes older than film itself. This is a vanity project, one that should have remained on Ferrell’s FunnyOrDie site in fragmented clips, rather than blight a movie screen and waste the entertainment dollars of cash-strapped moviegoers.

Even more offensive than the shit jokes and the obvious lack of inspiration is the premise itself, which asks a fairly mature audience to feel empathy and kinship for two lazy, loud-mouthed morons. I, for one, find it repugnant that these two dick necks refuse to work, preferring instead to live at home with their far-too-forgiving parents. I wanted to crawl through the screen and beat both of them to death with a large baseball bat rather than laugh with them … and that’s a bad feeling to have during a comedy.

More than anything, Step Brothers signals the death knell of Ferrell’s winning streak. The backlash, already brewing, has noticed the repetitious formula that has fueled Ferrell’s recent outings. Anchorman was a low budget, stream-of-consciousness surprise in 2004 – much like Jim Carrey’s Ace Ventura – but subsequent outings has been stale, formless, and redundant. How many more movies can possibly feature Ferrell’s gelatinous backside and still get laughs?? How many violent, random outbursts can Ferrell fake before the schtick fails to amuse?

Remember, I say this as a fan of the guy.

The time has come when more is expected of Ferrell, Reilly and Judd Apatow than recycled sight gags and regurgitated, formless, SNL-style skits. We know they’re having fun, but that no longer translates to the audience who paid to see it.