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It must have sounded like a good premise at some point. There are the hero cops, and there are the other guys, the cops who do all the dirty, nonglamorous work. And this is their story. Wait, that’s not a terribly good premise at all. Who cares about the other guys? What kind of an action movie would focus on the other guys?
This one, which pairs accountant-like Will Ferrell with hotheaded Mark Wahlberg, each with an implausible past necessary to keep their characters out of the limelight and on light or otherwise boring duty. Each is envious of their precinct’s hotshots, played by Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson. But then the heroes are taken out of the equation, and it’s up to the other guys to step up and solve some high-handed financial scheme.
Ferrell and Wahlberg have no chemistry. They’re just another set of mismatched cops with differing views on everything. Wahlberg pines for his ex, a ballerina; Ferrell is married to drop-dead-gorgeous Eva Mendes (whom he pretends is a Plain Jane, har har), and that’s about the most plausible thing about the movie. One cop is straightlaced, the other is not. One cop drives a Prius, the other…wait, Wahlberg doesn’t even own a car. So the only reason Ferrell drives a Prius is that it’s easy to make fun of someone who drives one. Both cops are constantly berated and insulted by their coworkers for no discernable reason. They’re not wacky, they’re wacked.
Is The Other Guys a comedy? Couldn’t prove it by me. There’s not a joke to be found, really; the paper-thin characterizations wear very, very quickly. It’s as is the writers decided that Ferrell and Wahlberg would each be a particular type – but then found nothing funny to write about them. And let’s face it, having one guy scream all the time and the other guy nerding up the joint doesn’t automatically make things humorous. There are no gags, although you will gag at the ineptitude with which this movie was written (partly by Ferrell stalwart Adam McKay). There are no hilarious set pieces, no random bits of absurdity. It’s a faceless, directionless pile of pablum that can’t even muster up the energy to lampoon cop movies.
The supporting cast is wasted. Johnson and Jackson are out of it early, conveniently enough, but even their scenes are one dimensional; they exist merely to show what Ferrell and Wahlberg aspire to be. (It should also be noted that the stunts in this movie strain credulity past the breaking point, with the lone exception of an early Johnson/Jackson scene.) It’s as if the film were a movie about the making of cop movies, with all of the cops played by bottom-of-the-barrel stuntmen.
Mendes is terrific and beautiful, and she actually gets some of the best lines in the film, as does Michael Keaton as the guys’ boss, Gene Mauch – so named because Ferrell, in real life, is an Angels baseball fan, and Mauch was the name of their longtime manager. On the other hand, Rob Riggle and Damon Wayans, Jr. (oh, no, not another one) are as hilarious as constipation; they serve no purpose other than to be annoying, cruel, vapid, and stupid.
It’s saying something that the only real punch a movie provides is during its end credits. In this case, a series of increasingly alarming stats rolls across the scene, focusing on bailout money and bonuses paid to already-rich people who helped caused financial destruction in the United States. What that has to do with this movie is a connection that can be made only tenuously.
The Other Guys: *
