Review: The Other Guys

Grade: C+

NYPD detectives P.K. Highsmith and Christopher Danson are superstars on the force. Everybody wants to be them. But this movie isn’t about them; it’s about the other guys, detectives Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz. Gamble and Hoitz only ever sit at their desks and do the accounting and paperwork of the other detectives in the office. While Gamble is perfectly content with this, Hoitz wants nothing more than to get on the streets of New York and solve crimes. Finally, they decide to look into a seemingly meaningless case that they soon find out there is much more to. As they uncover more and more clues, more and more people seem to be trying to kill them. They realize that this is their shot at being taken seriously as cops and that if they follow through with this case they could be either heroes or wind up dead. Can they do it?

The Other Guys is written and directed by Adam McKay (Step Brothers, Talladega Nights) and stars his favorite actor, Will Ferrell (Land of the Lost, Stranger Than Fiction) as well as Mark Wahlberg (Date Night, The Departed). The way the movie is written is basically an endless stream of one-liners being shot off in every direction that unfortunately only about 15-20% of which are funny to anyone over the age of 14. There are some genuinely very funny moments and gags in the movie though that does help it along. But, unfortunately, this movie follows the same path of McKay’s previous movies of being mostly immature and childish humor that only thirteen year old boys would really find funny. I will admit, there is one scene in the movie that is both hilarious and visually amazing, it's a continuous shot through a freeze frame of a bar showing Ferrell and Wahlberg's characters in different compromising situations with Black Eyed Peas playing in the background, fantastic.

Will Ferrell plays the role of Allen Gamble, a mild mannered cop who is perfectly content at his desk. Ferrell does a typical Will Ferrell performance, dead-panning one-liners (which does tend to make them funny) and then at some point, screaming and running around. Ferrell definitely had his moments in Other Guys that were pretty funny, but not enough. Opposite Ferrell is Mark Wahlberg, who plays Terry Hoitz, an unnecessarily angry man whose career was almost ended after he accidentally shot Derek Jeter. Wahlberg was pretty entertaining throughout the movie and did a good job with this role. I Will admit that one thing that does work in this movie is the odd couple factor of these two characters, makes it pretty interesting.

The movie also stars Michael Keaton (Post Grad, Toy Story 3) as Captain Gene Mauch. Keaton was funny in this movie as he played a man that not only was a police captain but a supervisor at Bed, Bath and Beyond. Steve Coogan (Tropic Thunder, In The Loop) plays David Ershon, a business executive with a secret. Coogan is always funny and does a decent job in this movie. Eva Mendes (The Spirit, Ghost Rider) plays Dr. Sheila Gamble, Allen Gamble’s wife. Mendes was pretty entertaining but she was mostly there to really help the joke that Will Ferrell’s character attracts really hot women. Samuel L. Jackson (Iron Man 2, Soul Men) and Dwayne Johnson (The Rundown, Southland Tales) play detectives Highsmith and Danson respectively. These two were great together in this movie and I wish the movie was about them instead. They were hilarious in general and hilarious together but they are only in the movie briefly.

The Other Guys wasn’t bad but it wasn’t as good as I was hoping it would be. If you are a fan of movies like Step Brothers and Talladega Nights then you might enjoy this movie. For me, the way I see it is that if you aren’t 13 years old, you can skip this movie for now.