While many people may see the ‘80s as the age of John Hughes and teenage films, I always saw it as the age of the “buddy cop” films; an era of police detectives (usually never police officers) being forced to pair with their complete opposites who eventually become good friends through killing multiple bad guys. Do you want proof? Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours, Red Heat, Beverly Hills Cop, Alien Nation, Turner & Hooch, K-9, Tango and Cash and the Miami Vice TV series were all released in the ‘80s and are considered classics of the genre, though, of course, there was oversaturisation with other crap like Collision Course. Now, much like the pseudo-Exploitation films of recent years, the genre is trying to make a modern comeback with some mixed success, with the good end of the spectrum containing Hot Fuzz and the bad end containing Cop Out. So, let us see where Adam McKay’s The Other Guys stands.
The film follows the eponymous “other guys”; NYPD detectives Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell), a mild-mannered, bureaucratic forensic accountant and his reluctant partner Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg), forced to work with Gamble after shooting a baseball player (it happens). After the sudden death of the departments badass super cops P. K. Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson) and Chris Danson (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), Hoitz is determined to prove himself and get back to the streets, which won’t be a wise decision as Hoitz seems to be a near sociopath, while dragging his reluctant partner along. Soon, a simple violation thingy escalates into something involving stocks, fraud, Chechens and terrorist factions or something, and if you think I was not paying attention to the plot, well then, neither was the film. The main investigatory plot seems to be mainly in the background while Mark Wahlberg tries to find out what genre of film seems to fit his acting style and some funny and many unfunny moments.
The Other Guys has some reasonably funny moments like the slight chemistry between Wahlberg and Ferrell and Wahlberg’s very hammy performance of a complete sociopath. But, arguably, the most funny part has to be when Highsmith and Danson are pursuing some perps onto a rooftop and jump-off, aiming for some non-existent bushes, but end up brutally face-planting into the ground. It is never explained or referenced again, but is so fucking out of left field that you just cannot help except laugh at the WTF-iness of it. Unfortunately, it’s outweighed by very unfunny, consistent parts of the film that could be described as “anti-jokes without any humour”, in that there‘s an unfunny setup with no punch line. Like this, Michael Keaton is in The Other Guys and they just expect you to find it inherently funny, because, you know, it’s Michael Keaton, he was funny in Beetlejuice and Much Ado Bout Nothing and is considered the best Batman. Yes, Keaton is a great actor, a scene-stealer and very funny…when you give him something to do. Don’t just throw him in, make him a police chief with a part-time job working in a department store and expect it to be funny. And another example is Eva Mendes as Gamble’s wife, which Hoitz is always in disbelief to such a fact, so much so that he openly flirts and technically sexual assaults her, because she’s hot and has boobs. And that’s about the length of the joke, which would be tolerable if it wasn’t used about, oooh, several fucking times and really, we’ve come to expect a plain, unattractive man to have a hot-as-hell girlfriend/wife after years of recent Romantic-Comedies.
One colossal ball of confusion for me was the ending, specifically the end credits; while the end credits roll, stylized pictograms that analyse Ponzi schemes and diagrams of how the average CEO of an average American company earns over twenty times as much as one of their employees and the current (as of when the film was released) economic crisis. Yes, apparently this was about the economic recession caused by the sub prime mortgage crisis and the rampart, unfair “one-percenters” of Corporate America…I think. I mean, there was a character who was involved in banking fraud and something about stocks, but that’s about it. I get the rather cynical feeling that this was an attempt at relevance, like they knew they were making a film in a sub-genre that hasn’t been used nor has been funny since the ‘80s and just threw in a reference that fails and makes the film feel dated in a couple of years, like a Seltzer-Berg spoof film. However, if that wasn’t the reason and it was a sincere commentary on the economic state of the Western world, then why the Bernie Madoff didn’t they just make a film about it? Why make a buddy cop film if you trying to make a statement on the economy and, by extension, capitalism? It’s like making a film filled with rape, ultra violence and paedophilia and saying it’s a commentary and examination of the state of the modern world and an ultranationalistic, post-war Eastern European nation.
The Other Guys is a fairly mediocre romp into a bygone genre, with some quite funny genre savvy humour unfortunately imbalanced by more unfunny parts of jokes that don’t go beyond the setup. That and the fact it was suppose to be about the economic crisis just makes it a mess. You may find amusement from it, but that is probably if you saw Kevin Smith’s abysmal Cop Out beforehand.
I’m Random Internet Critic and I criticise it because you can’t stand where I stand, you can’t walk where I walk.
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