The Other Guys

Title: The Other Guys (2010)
Director: Adam McKay
Genre: Crime, Comedy
Lead Actor(s): Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg
Rating: PG-13
107 minutes

While not a classic comedy by any means, this movie is certainly better than the majority of the “comedies” Hollywood gifted us with this summer. After two star detectives in the NYPD die, there is a hole for the new it guys. Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) very much wants that spot for him and his partner, Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell). They are both jokes around the office. Hoitz for shooting Derek Jeter and Gamble for being a “paper bitch.” After Gamble tries to make a dull arrest on a man in violation of scaffolding permits, the two stumble upon a big case and think that this could be their chance to be something other than “the other guys.”

Will Ferrell is as he almost always is. An ADD 12-year-old who just keeps poking his 16-year-old big brother. I think that if Ferrell had been a bit more reined in, the movie could have been better than it is. Most of the parts I didn’t like heavily featured him. Many of his jokes were beat to death and became “how much longer are they going to stick with this bit.” His interactions with his wife (Eva Mendes) particularly suffer due to this. There are some that last more than others. The odd attraction Gamble has to attractive women is one that actually works, but it is not a joke that last five minutes. A hot girl looks or comments at Gamble, and Hoitz is baffled. I also found the bit about Gamble in college annoying and jarring. It really drug me out of this comedy that had a good amount of satire on cop movies and made me acutely aware that I was watching a movie. Ferrell is actually pretty adept at playing dull Gamble who loses real gun privileges and gets wood gun privileges. It is when his part goes to the more extreme aspects that I lose interest in the movie.

Considering the extreme behavior of his co-star, Mark Wahlberg manages not to simply fade into the background, which would have been very easy to do. Instead he is just as visible in his flaws as Gamble. He is hated by just about everyone in New York for his shooting of Jeter during the World Series. He is the stereotypical cop who doesn’t know how to be anything but a cop and has an odd obsession with drug crimes. I don’t know if there is a single scene until maybe the end where he is not wearing his shield around his neck. He also has a really short fuse. Wahlberg manages to, for the most part, keep his character from going into the heavy-handed Scary Movie territory. It is also very interesting to compare his Detective Hoitz with his Sgt. Dignam in The Departed. There are many similarities between the characters despite being opposite styles.

I briefly want to say how much I loved the beginning with Samuel L. Jackson as P.K. Highsmith and The Rock as Det. Danson. These are the two star cops who die in a spectacular and rather funny way. I thought the roles were cast perfectly and utterly hilarious. I also think it was a great idea to cast Ice-T as the narrator. Morgan Freeman he is not, but for this movie he was perfect.

This is one of the better buddy cop movies that has come out in recent years and elements of it are really funny. It just gets bogged down in certain points and I really think the writer needs to take to heart, “brevity is the soul of wit.” I wouldn’t pay full movie theater price to see it, but definitely suggest renting it off redbox or netflix and decide what you think about it.

***** 5/10