The Other Guys

The Other Guys
2010
Directed by: Adam McKay
Starring: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg

For some reason, ridiculous hilarity actually worked here. The story of the movie begins with, well nothing. Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson are ridiculously over-the-top cops with big muscles and even bigger egos. Ferrell and Wahlberg play loser desk-job cops who never see the up close of a crime scene. This all changes when Jackson and Johnson die of stupidity. That's the movie in a nutshell.

It tried to have a story of corruption, but focused more on the humor. The movie kind of felt like an episode of the Colbert Report, where he doesn't care about anything he's talking about as long as he can chime in a joke or two. The ridiculous (I don't care how many times I use that word in this review) random scenes provide the hilarious combination of humor and stupidity.

Will Ferrell is obnoxious. Not a surprise. Mark Wahlberg was awkward. The two of them worked well as a team. I still can't get past how much I can't stand Ferrell though. His childish acting failures annoy me to no end. I feel I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more without him in it. Mark Wahlberg is very universal it seems though. His humor limit is extended.

I feel that the movie really had no direction except to make people laugh. That annoys me a little, but the laughs were pretty good when they were on target. The Derek Jeter thing is still making my sides hurt. I love the way people are just randomly thrown in a shit-storm of a story and can make the movie that much better. The small side-story of Wahlberg's character being haunted by an encounter with the Yankee shortstop made the movie all that more interesting.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the end credits where it pretty much explains all the stuff in the movie that would be too confusing to the childish high school students who pretend to like good movies but only go to laugh at the immaturity of Ferrell's flawed acting. The credits explained what a Ponzi scheme is and how the world of financial troubles have hurt the average American but benefited high-powered executives. Oh well, I guess there's no room to sympathize for the other guys.

Stars (out of 10): 6 1/2