Is Step Brothers Our Excuse to Break Up With Will Ferrell?

It's time to face up, people. Step Brothers is opening this weekend, and you know as well as I do that not a lot of us are going to go see it. It's sad to think of poor Will Ferrell being left all alone in an empty theater, but it's time for him to face the fact that we've moved on. And it's time for him to do the same.

I'm worried that Will might take this pretty hard. He's going to wonder what happened to change us like this. After all, he's still the same guy we loved in Old School, Elf, and Anchorman. We'll need to tell him, that's just it -- he hasn't changed at all since we met him. He's failed to grow as an entertainer. His lack of creative ambition has been worrying us for a while. Doesn't he want to do more with his talents? Of course, he'll refuse to believe that it's his fault. He'll look for outside forces to blame. He'll ask us if there's someone else. And that's when the conversation will start to get awkward for us -- because there is someone else. In fact, there are a few someone elses.

We began to stray three years ago, with a movie called The 40 Year Old Virgin. It started out innocent enough, we swear. After all, it was directed by Judd Apatow, starred Steve Carell, and also featured Paul Rudd. These guys were Will's friends! He worked with them on Anchorman. We didn't expect them to make a move.

But once they had us alone, away from Will, they were different. Yeah, they were still gross, goofy, and slightly over-the-top, but they showed us things that Will had never been able to. Their comedic antics were more firmly grounded in reality. Their plots were actually relatable. And their characters felt like three dimensional people that actually reminded you of people you might know. Being with them versus being with Will felt like the difference between hanging out with a really funny friend versus laughing at a raving lunatic shouting obscenities on the subway. So, we followed the temptation. Instead of making Blades of Glory the biggest comedy hit of 2007, we hung with Apatow and his buddies in Knocked Up and Superbad. This year, instead of quoting silly catchphrases from Semi-Pro, we're still singing the Dracula song from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. And this weekend, instead of making plans to see Step Brothers, we'll be quietly counting down the days till Pineapple Express rolls into theaters.

Hopefully it will comfort Will to know he's not alone in being left behind. Adam Sandler and Mike Myers went through the same painful split from their fans earlier this summer. The computer-animated giant green ogre Myers voiced in the Shrek films felt more authentically human than his Love Guru character. As for Sandler, You Don't Mess With the Zohan felt like a giant step backwards after his attempts to stretch himself in films like Reign Over Me.

Your fans have grown up a little, Will. We want to see comedies about real people, not people who act like cartoon characters. Maybe if you learn how to start playing characters instead of caricatures, we can be friends again someday. But for now, when we don't show up for Step Brothers, please try to understand that it's really not us, Will, it's you.

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