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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

The Steps is a stinker

THE STEPS (Andrew Currie). 100 minutes. Opens Friday (June 3). See listing. Rating: N


The Steps has one great line and one great performance, and it’s remarkable that those two things are even detectable in this awful, awful comedy about a blended family who meet – and squabble – on a snowy weekend at a Parry Sound lake house. 

A talented cast (including Jason Ritter, James Brolin, Christine Lahti, Kate Corbett, Vinay Virmani and Naomi Snieckus) struggles to breathe life into screenwriter Robyn Harding’s stock characters and generic conflicts. Apparently we’re supposed to be surprised that adult children keep secrets from their parents, and also that senior citizens might still enjoy sex.

And it’s all directed so indifferently by Andrew Currie (Fido) that it’s unclear whether Brolin and Ritter were even in the same room for their big father-son scene. 

Who gives the great performance? That would be Steven McCarthy, who’s terrific as the family fuck-up, a resentful ex-rocker who really should have been the film’s focal character instead of Ritter’s floundering hedge-fund hopeful.

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