Leave it to Hollywood to release two ‘80s cop movie send-ups—not exactly a burgeoning genre—within six months of each other. Thankfully, comedy team Adam McKay and Will Ferrell spare audiences another atrocity in faring better with the material than Kevin Smith, Bruce Willis, and Tracy Morgan did in their dreadful Cop Out. Then again, that isn’t much of a compliment given how abysmal Cop Out was. In fact, only by comparison to that dud does The Other Guys seem like a clever riot. Let’s get the good out of the way first. One thing McKay and Chris Henchy admittedly get right is their use of genre references, which is far broader and more story-focused than that in Cop Out. Whereas Kevin Smith’s film just felt like a long string of nods to ‘80s clichés, The Other Guys seems like its own modern movie. For instance, at the beginning of the film, McKay and Henchy have the hilarious team of Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson play super-cops who are so full of themselves, they leap off a skyscraper in order to catch criminals at ground level, falling to their deaths. This isn’t a recognizable reference to any particular movie, but a wildly hyperbolic parody of an ‘80s cop movie prototype. This is much funnier than a more specific approach would have been. In fact, The Other Guys leaves most of its pointed references for more obscure topics, like TLC songs.
The plot itself is built around a topical villain—Ponzi scheme artist David Ershon (Steve Coogan)—but remains within the realm of an homage thanks to protagonists Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Terry Holz (Mark Wahlberg). They’re your typical low-level NYPD partners who never see any action. Allen has no aspirations beyond paperwork at the bureau and Terry’s accidental shooting of Derek Jeter during the World Series put the kibosh on his goal of becoming a distinguished officer.
Early on, Terry decides he wants to live large once again and begins suckering Allen into attempting real police work, albeit out of Allen’s ruby-red Prius. They aren’t very successful at first, but mistakenly strike gold when Allen goes after the mysteriously wealthy Ershon for scaffolding violations on his construction projects. The duo isn’t smart enough to piece together the their suspect’s fraudulent scheme right away, but somehow they slowly string evidence together. As they inch towards cracking the Ponzi scheme Ershon has cooked up—against orders to stay off the case, of course—one misadventure after another ensues.
There are several laughs to be had, but The Other Guys ends up unsatisfying. The main reason for this is the script gets progressively less funny, further descending into mindless action rather than comedy. The most entertaining segment of the film is its first ten minutes, which feature the aforementioned Johnson/Jackson antics, not leads Ferrell and Wahlberg. That’s never a good sign, as the viewer naturally becomes more impatient and in need of compelling material as a picture moves, making its absence even more bothersome. The Other Guys only runs an hour and 47 minutes, but it feels longer because the comedy is poorly paced.
Another crushing blow to the funny-factor is that Ferrell’s ridiculous antics just aren’t as amusing as they once were. His delivery of a bit in which he explains to Wahlberg how a family of tuna could hunt a lion probably would have been hilarious five years ago, but now it just feels like Ferrell rehashing a previous performance. As a staunch defender of Ferrell over the years, I’ve previously never wanted to join detractors in commenting: “Yes, we get it – you’re obnoxious, dumb, and do not understand other people’s emotions, what’s the big deal?” But The Other Guys sadly had me ready to scream those words at the screen on a few occasions. Ironically, Ferrell proves the funniest here when he’s at his most understated.
Then there’s McKay’s weird inclusion of political commentary, which misses being interesting and just seems out-of-place. There are several strangely serious anti-corporate jabs throughout The Other Guys, capped off with an end-credit sequence full of statistics about bank bailouts, Ponzi schemes, and other related topics. I’m all for comedy being topical and resonant, but McKay just throws in these ideas haphazardly and the result is that the movie always seems to be hinting at something grander but that never confronts it. Viewers who read McKay’s regular politically-charged Tweets might cast their own projections on this aspect of the film, but looking at it objectively, it just seems like a vague distraction to the story.
Ultimately, The Other Guys feels like it would have been better off as a series of shorts on McKay and Ferrell’s FunnyorDie.com so as to not wear out its welcome. While that may have led to budgetary constraints making Jackson and Johnson’s big gag at the beginning impossible, the rest of the truly funny material would’ve remained intact as it doesn’t stem from expensive action. Instead, it’s the little things, like Michael Keaton’s police chief, who makes constant humorous references to the fact he must work a second job at Bed Bath & Beyond to put his bisexual son through a frou-frou program at NYU. Unfortunately, these are exactly what disappear as the movie reaches its bullet-filled finale, succumbing to mediocrity. Sure, The Other Guys is better than Cop Out, but with so many lame ‘80s cop flicks surely about to find new life on Blu-Ray, why do we need new ones at all?
* * *
The Other Guys (2010, USA). Produced by Joshua Church, William M. Connor, Patrick Crowley, Jessica Elbaum, Will Ferrell, Chris Henchy, David B. Householter, Adam McKay, Rizelle Mendoza, Kevin J. Messick, and Jimmy Miller. Directed by Adam McKay. Written for the screen by Adam McKay and Chris Henchy. Starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Steve Coogan, Eva Mendes, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Dwayne Johnson, and Lindsay Sloane. Distributed by Columbia Pictures. Rated PG-13, with a running time of 107 minutes.
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