Ferrell, Reilly ad-lib way through Step Brothers
The script never got in the way of a good fight as comic actors Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly improvised their way through family warfare in the movie Step Brothers, which opened last Friday. In making the film, director Adam McKay served as ringmaster for ad-libbed scenes of sibling rivalry between Ferrell and Reilly, who play immature adults each living with a parent and forced to co-exist when one’s mother and the other’s father get married. McKay worked with Ferrell, 41, and Reilly, 43, on the 2006 hit comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby – another heavily improvised film – and teaming up again allowed the trio to reprise their impromptu comic style.
Thrown together, the two step brothers start off on a confrontational footing, taking swings at each other with baseball bats and golf clubs. After realising they are more alike than different, they become friends and create chaos for their parents, then team up to save their parents’ marriage when it sours. Playing the two parents are actress Mary Steenburgen, 55, an Oscar winner for Melvin And Howard who starred in Elf with Ferrell, and Richard Jenkins, 61, who starred in the HBO drama Six Feet Under. The actress said that she had to work hard to keep up with Ferrell and Reilly, whose improvisation prowess she compared with the boxing talents of Muhammad Ali. “I was nervous at the very beginning, because, it felt like in terms of improvisation, it was like getting in the ring with two Alis or something, because they’re pretty amazing at this,” Steenburgen added.