Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
11/8/10
Here's
an odd movie that says almost as much about the difference between the
way I watch movies and the way most people I know watch movies as it does
about any of the topics it covers. The Other Guys marks Adam
McKay's 4th feature, all four of which have starred his longtime friend
and collaborator Will Ferrell. Two of those, Anchorman and
Step Brothers, are utterly hysterical and
relentlessly quotable gems. I wasn't as big a fan of Talladega
Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, although it has its moments
and a tremendous supporting performance by Gary Cole. The Other
Guys slots somewhere between those two groups in terms of laughs, but
it's a total change of pace in the sense that it seems to want to, I don't
know, be really, really artistically brilliant. It's not, and at
times the effort makes it downright confusing, but I couldn't help but
be a little bit fascinated by the rumblings of ambition that are confirmed
by closing credits filled with, of all things, statistics designed to stir
audience outrage. Most people won't even notice, but I actually enjoyed
The Other Guys almost as much as a thematic puzzle as I did as a
comedy. Which would be a lot better thing if it were funnier or more
thematically sound.
The
citizens of New York City owe their safety to two men: Superstar
Detectives Danson (Dwayne Johnson) and Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson), whose
adventures are like a daily Lethal Weapon movie both in terms of
the criminals they arrest and the destruction they leave in their wake.
Most members of the NYPD, including their Captain, Gene Mauch (Michael
Keaton) are content to simply bask in their glow, but disgraced Detective
Terry Holtz (Mark Wahlberg) wants to taste the big time himself.
Instead, he's paired with forensic accountant Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell)
in what are really glorified desk jobs. When Danson and Highsmith
are killed in the line of duty, it creates a perfect opportunity for Terry
to regain the luster lost when he shot Derek Jeter at the World Series
seven years earlier. Allen is obsessed with a scaffolding permit
violation that keeps leading to bigger and bigger revelations about billionaire
David Ershon (Steve Coogan) that lead right to the darkest parts of Wall
Street. Can these “other guys” step up and save the day before Ershon's
dirty scheme finally pays off?
Most
viewers will see in The Other Guys only another series of crazy
non-sequiters designed to showcase Ferrell's talent for playing straight
man to an insane world. And the movie does, from time to time, have
some really big laughs. Its most remarkable revelation is just how
funny Wahlberg can be: spending the entire film in a barely suppressed
rage, he's hilarious just to look at, and I can imagine that a better script
could do amazing things with this persona. As it was, I laughed pretty
often at the simple quality of his relentless outrage. I'd have liked
to have seen more made of some of the funniest bits, like a sequence where
the Detectives accept courtside seats to the Knicks and primo tickets to
Jersey Boys from Ershon only to realize once they've gotten there
that these gifts are... BRIBES! And Terry's status as “The Man Who
Shot Derek Jeter” could have been worked far harder than it is (amazingly,
after turning up in a flashback to get shot, the Yankees Captain doesn't
even figure into the present-day plot). The fact that Allan is a
white-knuckle former pimp is good for some laughs, but not as many as the
movie thinks. Ditto the fact that he doesn't seem to relalize that
his “homely” wife is in fact Eva Mendes.
But
once we've gotten to that bit, we're reaching the more intriguing and frustrating
part of The Other Guys, the one that's grasping at a larger statement
about how the world has turned on blue collar Other Guys like Terry and
left them defenseless against the machinations of the Ershons of the world
because they simply cannot wrap their brain around a corrupt world gone
mad. Wahlberg wears an expression of “But... but...” on his face
throughout the film, stopping only when he's demoted to a traffic cop job
that keeps him out of the way while corporate evildoers plot to steal his
pension. He's obsessed with an ex-girlfriend (Lindsay Sloane) he
can deal with only in cliched “tough cop” terms that make no sense in context:
he busts into her ballet classes talking like she's a stripper. And
what to make of the deaths of Danson and Highsmith, who stand atop a 20-story
building chasing bad guys who've rappelled into the street below and agree
to jump after them, aiming “for the bushes”, except that there aren't any
bushes there as they plunge to their deaths? It would be easy to
say my brain was just reading too much into random silliness except for
those end credits, which roll off one statistic after another about the
extent of the Wall Street collapse and its impact on the common man.
The Other Guys wants to say something in the worst way, and for
the most part, it does: getting just enough of its point across to
leave me trying to figure out not what it all means (those credits take
care of that), but how it was supposed to mean it.
McKay
shouldn't be applying to direct the next Lethal Weapon movie should
one be made: The Other Guys' action looks cheap and is hard
to follow. And I do wonder if we'll ever see the crisp, hilarious
Michael Keaton of the 80's again: as in most of his recent comic
vehicles, he seems manically disinterested as the Captain who moonlights
at Bed Bath & Beyond (and the running gag where he randomly quotes
TLC lyrics needed another polish, at least).
But
The Other Guys gets by, mostly because it pairs two very funny guys,
and then puts them through the paces of a bizarro version of a time-tested
genre. I'd love to speak to McKay and his co-writer Chris Henchy
about just what they hoped to accomplish here, besides covering a car in
cocaine (pretty damn funny, I must say). You, on the other hand,
might enjoy the movie more if you don't worry about it. At least
until some David Ershon steals YOUR pension, leaving McKay to tell you
he told you so, albeit not all that well. |
