Step Brothers 1 1/2 Stars—The title is “Step Brothers.” You know, because there are two of them. But Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are essentially playing the same person, which is the movie’s fundamental, irreparable flaw. As 40-year-olds who’ve never left home and are forced to share a bedroom when their parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) get married, Ferrell and Reilly are stuck in the same state of arrested development. There’s no odd-couple tension, no witty banter, just a prolonged, painfully unfunny game of one-upmanship in which each actor is trying to outdo the other in one-note obnoxiousness. You wouldn’t want to spend two hours with one of them, much less both. Sure, they display slight personality differences— Ferrell’s Brennan wears vintage T-shirts with Pablo Cruise or The Judds on them, while Reilly’s Dale prefers Yoda—but they’re cut from the same kitschy cloth. The humorously awkward chemistry these actors shared as NASCAR teammates in “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” is gone, because the script makes no room for it. Which is strange, because Ferrell co-wrote the screenplay with his old friend, director Adam McKay, with whom he collaborated on that previous comedy. (Reilly shares a story-by credit.) As you watch the movie, it doesn’t take long to realize that their creative process consisted of sitting around, cracking each other up with adolescent gags, and then writing it all down. Whether the rest of the world will be doubled over with laughter seems irrelevant. R for crude and sexual content, and pervasive language. 112 min.—Christy Lemire



The X-Files: I Want to Believe 2 Stars—The makers of the new “X-Files” movie have done themselves a disservice in coming up with the elongated title, “The X-Files: I Want to Believe.” Really, it just invites a whole bunch of bad jokes which, unfortunately, are justified. It’s easy to imagine how they might go: I want to believe another “X-Files” movie is necessary, 10 years after the first one came out and six years after the pioneering sci-fi series went off the air. I want to believe it’s worth my time and money, even if I wasn’t a fervent devotee of the TV show. And I want to believe that Mulder and Scully still have the same chemistry they once did—a big reason the series developed a cult fan base. Well, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson do slip comfortably back into the roles that made them superstars in the 1990s, but the movie itself from director and “X-Files” series creator Chris Carter never feels like anything more than an extended episode. In deference to the show’s many mysteries and twists, we won’t give anything away here. We’ll just say the plot involves a missing persons case, severed body parts and some creepy hunts and chases through the snow. In writing the script, Carter and longtime collaborator Frank Spotnitz have come up with a stand-alone story, one that doesn’t require expertise in “X-Files” minutiae to follow, although they’ve also left some nuggets for loyal fans along the way. Amanda Peet and rapper Xzibit co-star as FBI agents on the case, with Billy Connolly as a fallen priest who may or may not be experiencing psychic visions. PG-13 for violent and disturbing content and thematic material. 104 min.—Christy Lemire



RATINGS: 4 stars: Excellent; 3 stars: Good; 2 stars: Fair; 1 star: Poor