Please accept this as my notice of resignation, because - oh, not the quitting kind of resignation; good luck prying this sweet gig from my kung-fu grip. This is just to inform that despite my nutritious arthouse upbringing, I'm resigned to the fact that I'm powerless in the face of unrefined comedies where emotionally stunted men swear like sailors at a truck stop and bash the stuffing out of each other. Strangely, it's really only become a source of joy/shame in the last few years, now that we're firmly entrenched in what will one day be remembered as the Apatovian era.

The sixth movie this year with Judd Apatow's fingerprints on it (that tally includes next week's stoner bromance, "Pineapple Express"), "Step Brothers" re-teams the prolific producer with his "Talladega Nights" henchmen for a goofy comedy in which two 40-ish toddlers are forced to embrace adulthood. Now, growing up means different things to different people, like wearing a tux to your job interview, losing your virginity ("It's slippery!"), or buying toilet paper in bulk. But the subversiveness of the otherwise unsubtle "Step Brothers" is that it finally admits what we all secretly know: being an adult is totally overrated.

Will Ferrell stars as Brennan, a jobless slacker who butts heads with a kindred spirit in John C. Reilly's equally unambitious Dale when Brennan's mother (Mary Steenburgen) marries Dale's dad (the essential Richard Jenkins, "The Visitor") and the families merge. Their emotional development apparently frozen at the age of 8, one violent tantrum follows another as the two men try to co-exist without upsetting the slothful status quo. But the older generation's disappointment over the lack of harmony turns to horror when Dale and Brennan find common ground (velociraptors, vintage porn, Brennan's smarmy brother) and become twice the problem, prompting their parents to finally lay down the law.

Never mind that there's no valid reason for Dale and Brennan to share a room in that sprawling suburban home; it's the best way to accomplish the Wile E. Coyote-esque bunkbed gag. And don't dwell on the fact that two responsible professionals probably wouldn't have allowed their functioning adult children to suckle at the proverbial teat for four consecutive decades. "Step Brothers" requires as much suspension of disbelief as any summer escapism, but the id-quenching payoff is mostly worth it. Who hasn't contemplated burying your dearest enemy alive? Beating them with a bicycle? Rubbing your nethers on their precious, stupid drumset?

Ferrell co-wrote the relentless script with director Adam McKay (they're also behind the "Funny or Die" website, featuring McKay's cursing two-year-old Pearl as "The Landlord"), and they seem to understand that the inevitable plot trajectory (you know, responsibility) is also the dullest imaginable. Ferrell and McKay find a way to tweak it in a satisfying fashion, incorporating the need for evolution with the unwillingness to put away childish things. Not all the bits work (the sleepwalking angle is truly bizarre), but Ferrell and Reilly continue to be perfectly matched, as are Reilly and Jenkins, whose barnacled boxer mugs actually look related. Not so much for Ferrell and his on-screen mom, though a classy Oscar winner like Steenburgen wailing "What the fucking fuck?!?" as she turns the hose on her sons is never not funny.

Sylvie Testud nearly upstaged Marion Cotillard in last year's "La Vie En Rose" as the feisty best friend and has been quietly impressing American audiences since her graceful turn in 1996's "Beyond Silence." Testud's fearless character-actor air allows her much freedom, and she puts it to gender-bending use in director Serge Bozon's sad, whimsical "La France" as Camille, who masquerades as a teenage boy to search for her husband during the throes of World War I.

Camille falls in with a mysterious company of soldiers - including "La Vie En Rose" co-star Pascal Greggory as the haunted lieutenant - and "La France" follows them through the French countryside as they discuss the pointlessness of war and occasionally whip out homemade instruments to break into folk-rock that wouldn't be out of place in a Wes Anderson movie. "La France" is a curious creation, full of lovely nighttime photography, that takes the oft-noisy war film to a delicately feminine level.

Step Brothers

(R), directed by Adam McKay

Now playing

La France

(NR), directed by Serge Bozon

Screens Saturday at the Dryden