“The Other Guys” (2010)
Rating: 
The trailer for The Other Guys looked great. But trailers often grab the best jobs, stunts, or whatever and from that get you to assume the rest of the movie is just as good. And that’s what happened here.
That sounds a bit harsh as this is actually a pretty funny movie. It’s just not side-splitting funny, nor is it funny throughout. I’m not quite sure who they were targeting with this movie, maybe everyone, maybe that’s why it’s inconsistent.
OK, so what’s good about The Other Guys?
- Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the super-cops early in the movie. Completely over-the-top caricatures of cop-movie detectives. Jackson was best, but Johnson actually did OK.
- Eva Mendes as Ferrell’s hot, kinky wife. They hit just the right balance with her character and scripting. The scene where he Mom is relaying messages to Ferrell who’s hiding outside is truly sick and had the theatre rolling.
- Michael Keaton as the head of detectives also did a fine job. He really did come off as a guy who was having trouble remembering if he was working his day job at the NYPD, or his night job at “Bed, Bath, and Beyond.”
- The plot for the big crime they were trying to thwart. It’s usually not tough to figure out what’s going on in copy-buddy comedies as that’s not the point. But in this case they really did a pretty good job disguising things right up til the end.
- Will Ferrell‘s Prius gets a pretty strong role in the film – the little hybrid car does some pretty awesome stunt driving and also provides some good running gags. It was pretty good writing to not just have Ferrell drive a hybrid, but to weave the jokes about it all through the script.
- A good supporting cast of character actors. Rob Riggle (formerly of “The Daily Show“) makes another appearance and does a great job.
So much for the good. What’s bad?
- Mark Wahlberg is not Bruce Willis. He can’t do comedy. It doesn’t work. The lines don’t come out funny or serious – the come out semi-serious trying to be funny and it just doesn’t work. I don’t know if it was intentional, but Wahlberg’s character comes across as pretty conflicted about his sexuality at several points. Another actor could pull it off, it just felt weird in this case.
- Will Ferrell wasn’t where he needed to be for the role. This was some of the best work I’ve seen him do (and generally I can’t stand his movies, so any compliment from me about his acting is high praise), but he wasn’t detached enough from his surroundings to pull off the way the character was written; nor can he flip to the “dark side” well enough to portray his underlying “Gator” persona.
- The jokes are uneven. A lot of the time you’re just kind of watching and waiting for something funny to happen. And then what happens isn’t worth the wait.
- The usual implausible plot points – like the bad guys putting them on a train to Vegas instead of just killing them. Not funny. Waste of time. If you’re going to taser them and leave them someplace, make it at least interesting.
- There were a lot of points they left on the field. For instance, Ferrell’s character has some weird mojo charm with hot women which annoys Wahlberg. They could have really run with that the way they ran with the Prius and it’s have been funny and also filled in the dead spots.
Overall this is a pretty decent movie. It falls below a Bruce Willis flick, and maybe a little above something like “Rush Hour.” Wahlberg at least tries to move in a different direction and Ferrell stayed in character, and the supporting cast was great. I’m glad I didn’t stand in line for this one, but for a 10pm late-night movie fix it was OK.
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