The Other Guys (2010)

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.

Cyrus (2010)

I hope you’ve never heard of the “Mumblecore” film movement and genre of the independent film world or this diatribe will be entirely pointless. Mumblecore is one of the many forms of independent filmmaking, with many directors being acolytes. The first film considered a Mumblecore film was Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha. What defines a Mumblecore film is a low budget, use of non-professional actors, although Jay and Mark Duplass (the directors of this review’s subject) use professional actors, and a lot of improvisational acting. The plot and story usually revolve around a post-college relationship between two White (Not always; Medicine for Melancholy used Black protagonists) heterosexuals. Now, that all that copy and paste from Wikipedia is out of the way, let us review Mumblecore comedy-drama, Cyrus.