| The Other Guys |  |
When Will Ferrell teams up with director Adam McKay, hilarity usually tends to ensue. Even with their last effort, the somewhat overly dumbed-down Step Brothers, these two know how to make people laugh. The duo’s newest film, The Other Guys, which is not very new at all at this point definitely delivers in the laughs department in a summer that probably could of used a few more comedies like this.
The Other Guys starts off by showing us Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, two NYC cops relegated to filling out paperwork while living in the shadow of the irresponsibly badass cops Dansen and Highsmith (Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson). Those two then die in what has got to be the funniest death scene of the year, and the rest of the cops on the force attempt to rise to the occasion of bringing down a high profile Wall Street kingpin (Steve Coogan). There’s a surprising amount of plot crammed in to this movie, but that’s not really what makes it worth seeing.
What does make it worth seeing is the absurd little comedic riffs peppered throughout the movie, especially between Ferrell and Wahlberg. For the first time in a while, Will Ferrell actually plays a somewhat different take on the character he usually plays, and as usual gets in plenty of amusing one-liners. Wahlberg also shows that he can be pretty funny when he wants to be, while also serving as a respectable straightman. As for the rest of the cast, Michael Keaton makes for a pretty hilarious police captain, Steve Coogan is somewhat underutilized as usual, and Eva Mendes is just kind of there to look attractive and not much else.
Towards the end of the film, The Other Guys gets a little bogged down in its cop-movie action sequences, but by then I was already pretty satisfied by the amounts of belly-laughs the film provides. So basically this movie is pretty much what’d you’d expect out of an Adam McKay-Will Ferrell spin on the buddy cop genre. I know they aren’t exactly creating high art with their comedies, but as long they keep turning out collaborations, I’ll probably be willing to fork out a few bucks for their signature brand of low-brow humor.