THE STEPS (Canada 2015) **
Directed by Andrew Currie

Review by Gilbert Seah

THE STEPS of the movie title to the members of a step-family. There is every variation from stepmother, stepfather to stepmothers and stepsisters in this comedy about a dysfunctional step-family.

The setting is the family’s reunion at a lake house in picturesque Parry Sound, a small town in Northern Ontario. The patriarch, wealthy publishing magnate, Ed (James Brolin) has married the love of his life, a lovely, bubbly good-berated Sherry (Christine Lahti) and wants everyone over in order to convince a social worker that the happy family is perfect for the adoption of a Chinese girl.

The story’s main focus could be any member of the family, but it chooses failed investment banker, Ed’s son, Jeff (Jason Ritter) as the one. Whether this is the correct choice makes no difference, as long as the story has an anchor that puts everyone else into perspective. Jeff arrives with his party animal sister, Marla (Emmanuelle Chriqui). They meet Sherry’s children, pot-smoking half-East Indian Samir (Vinay Virmani), David (Benjamin Arthur) and Keith (Steven McCarthy). They do not get along.

Director Andrew Currie directed the zombie comedy FIDO a decade or so back – another family based comedy in which zombies could be trained as a pet. His comedy sense seems largely muddled in THE STEPS – a pity as FIDO was a very well received and hilarious comedy.

The script by Robyn Harding contains lots of potential for comedy. The fact that half of the siblings are American (Ed’s kids) and the other half Canadian (Sherry’s kids) opens humour to be poked at the different cultures. Jeff knocks over a stuffed moose in one scene and David angrily complains that the national animal is not respected. The many siblings from different backgrounds also offer other avenues for humour. The pot smoking allows Jeff to get very high; the party animal Marla is caught giving Keith a blow-job and David blasts Jeff with 7 hits of paintballs. Still, it is a disappointment then that Currie’s film is hardly funny. The jokes are mildly funny at best and the laugh-out loud segments are very few and far between.

Performances are largely wasted. Christian Lahti, so good in her early films like HOUSEKEEPING has nothing much to do here but to smile, complement everyone and lead silly ice-breaker games. The segment on paintball, the greatest potential for humour hardly generates any laughs at all.

When Ed tells Sherry at the film’s mid-point,that his children will come through at the end, the film really dips into predictability. Jeff turns into the perfect son, bringing the family together (literally) into getting the Chinese girl adopted.

The question is whether an audience wishes to see a dysfunctional family of Americans and Canadians eventually come together with silly jokes and pointless humour? The answer is one big ‘no’. But if the film turned out as funny as Currie’s last film FIDO, all might have been forgiven.