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Step Brothers is incoherent and forced, as if someone stretched out a short film without asking if it was worthy.

I have a confession, dear reader: There are some movie reviews where I, your faithful critic, only want to type out a few words and send the review off for print. It’s a simple truism that some movies simply aren’t worth several paragraphs of developed critique, and when writing about those movies my self-imposed word count requirement looms over me like Death’s scythe. But then I wasn’t brought on board to write “Eh” and call it a day… much as I’d sometimes like to. Step Brothers is one of these movies. Enjoy the flailing.

If you’ve ever had step-siblings, you know how it is: some new kid comes into your life and you’re expected to give up your space and your stuff for someone you’re expected to be all chummy with. And now there’s this new adult who’s taken up all your parent’s attention, and basically the whole thing sucks all around. Dale and Brennan can empathize.

One catch: Dale (John C. Reilly, whom the Onion A.V. Club called one of our finest actors, a hyperbole they likely already regret) and Brennan (Will Ferrell) are both men in their late 30’s who never moved out of their parents’ homes. Those parents (played by Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins, the goodest of sports) get hitched and force the family together, and Dale and Brennan have to learn to get along. Also, Brennan’s obnoxiously successful younger brother Derek (Adam Scott) is a dick.

This is not merely the beginning of a pitch; this is in fact the sum total of Step Brothers’ plot, such as it is. Ferrell and Reilly do their level best as man-children with childish desires and adult strength. Scott is very good at playing a smug dick. There’s a little bit of forward motion in the movie when Dale and Brennan bond over hating Derek and are then forced by their parents to find jobs and move out, but never what you’d call a story or a plot. Continuity exists only as something on which to hang jokes or skits.

The one-sentence review I composed for Step Brothers, the one I desperately want to write and call it a day, is “if you thought Talladega Nights was too coherent, then Step Brothers is for you.” I wasn’t particularly kind to Talladega Nights, either:

It’s clear that this cluster of directors, actors, and writers are no longer creating films for a large audience. More and more they make movies for themselves, and ask us to join in. The formula is most clearly evident in Steve Carell’s Brick character in Anchorman: ridiculous statements juxtaposed with sweetly sincere people who are also functionally retarded. Everyone’s absurd, in word and deed; the joke is that we know it and they don’t.

Bonus: in Step Brothers, the characters aren’t sweetly sincere at all. They’re actually kind of unbearable.

And really, that’s all that needs to be said. Each scene betrays the Saturday Night Live formula for comedy: begin with the punchline, then beat that sucker into the ground for five minutes until it’s stone dead. The laughs are present but isolated. Any comedy where you begin to wonder how close you are to the end—and cannot even guess an answer—is flawed on a fundamental level. It’s as if Ferrell and co. have dropped the pretense of telling stories at all. Proceed only if you need to see Reilly and Ferrell with their shirts off. Again.

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