Wicked 'Step Brothers' and 'The Wackness'

It has been a pretty funny week at the movies, and fun when it wasn't.

I'm sure that by 6 a.m. this morning someone somewhere canceled my temporary bragging rights of having seen The Dark Knight twice. Those sold-out midnight shows were backed up with 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. screenings in some markets (not ours that I'm aware of, but enlighten me, please).

It's nice to see such fervor for an excellent movie, as opposed to the similar rushes for Pirates 3: Dead Man's Chest and Spider-man 3. I'm hoping TDK takes away Spidey's opening weekend record of $151-million, just to again prove art, commerce and mainstream moviegoers truly can co-exist.

Those two TDK screenings were followed by three others. You can read about Pineapple Express elsewhere on this blog.

The stoner humor in PE plus the stoner dramedy of this morning's show, The Wackness, means Princess Di should've stashed more potato chips and Fruit Roll-Ups for me while she's in Fort Myers fishing with her girlfriends (at least, that's the story she tells me). This is the first week I've ever gotten cotton-mouth from sitting in theaters.

The Wackness features three terrific performances by Ben Kingsley (of course), Olivia Thirlby (which I might have guessed after Juno) and Josh Peck (who woulda thunk it, except Daly since he watches Nickelodeon).

Peck plays a just-graduated teen in 1994 Manhattan who supports his struggling, argumentative family by selling pot out of an ice cream cart. One of the best customers is his shrink (Kingsley), an old hippie with his own family problems. Thirlby his the doc's stepdaughter, whom Peck crushes on and she appreciates the gesture.

Writer-director Jonathan Levine re-creates Guliani-era New York with great skill and a dynamite soundtrack spotlighting Notorious B.I.G. and A Tribe Called Quest for Peck's character, and David Bowie and Donovan for Kingsley's. The movie drags a bit in the second half but has a Garden State/The Graduate coming-of-age vibe that I enjoyed. The Wackness opens Aug. 1, and it's mostly dopeness.

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly could use some the mind-altering substances used in The Wackness because those boys just ain't right in their heads. Their second collaboration after Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, confirms they're two peas in the same twisted pod.

Step Brothers is a one-joke comedy that somehow sustains itself for almost two hours. Ferrell and Reilly play 40-year-olds still living with their respective single parents, forced to co-exist when the parents (Mary Steenburgen, Richard Jenkins) get hitched. Not many comedians could carry off acting like spoiled 12-year-olds, and these guys almost don't.

When the angle starts getting stale, Ferrell and Reilly are capable of saying or doing anything obscene to hold your attention. Step Brothers opens July 25.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get ready to tape something for the 11 p.m. news on Ch. 10 regarding the Dark Knight phenomenon occurring. Then I'm hightailing it to New Port Richey to meet T-Bone, who invited me to help park cars at the 30th reunion of a Gulf High class that graduated four years after me.

Not a hard job; we're sitting in a golf cart for an hour or two, drinking beer and waving at cars. Then we'll hit the party inside, at the riverfront home of a guy who was an usher at my first wedding, something that neither of us bring up anymore. Nice warmup for Saturday night's Rays game at the Trop, followed by an M.C. Hammer concert, then Sunday by an Ybor City shindig at Columbia Restaurant for a local film production I'll tell you about later.

You know, you really can't touch this.

Comments

[Spell Girl]

Okay...I saw the preview on TV for Step Brothers. I just don't get whay Will Ferrell earns so much money. He's a one-trick pony. Just like Adam Sandler. It is obscene how much they make. (Although I did laugh a lot during Anchorman and Blades of Glory...for some reason.)

[Steve Persall]

Don't recall background music, but I do think I vomited in my mouth a little.

[Kennedy]

So what song is playing when Kingsley starts making out with Danny Tanner's daughter? "Into the Night" by Benny Mardones might be fitting, but I doubt anyone would hear it over the sounds of heaving in the theater.