The Other Guys (Movie Review)

Movie Review
The Other Guys
2010
Starring: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg
Directed by: Adam Mackay

Will Ferrell and the people of his ilk need to be stopped. They should be banished from Hollywood and never be allowed to make any more movies. The Other Guys is a ridiculously bad movie. Adam McKay’s film is another copycat Will Ferrell film. It’s so bad, it’s not even enjoyable to watch as a cheesy bad movie.

After the two top cops on the force die in the line of duty, two loser cops—Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg)—attempt to step up and try to take on the role of being the prized cops of New York City. When they realize that there’s a giant conspiracy within the financial community of the city to embezzle $32 billion dollars from an unwitting investor, they do everything they can to stop the crime even though it seems that their actions are causing more chaos than anything else.

The entire movie doesn’t make much sense as people are either written out of the story or things happen that completely come out of nowhere to try and piece together the narrative or, even worse, to be the punchline of a lame joke. The story itself is ridiculous nonsense that feels like it was composed by a third-grader. Even if you suspend some logic and try to have some fun while watching this film, it still isn’t enjoyable because the movie seems to be actively going out of it’s way to make no sense. Even the incident that lays the foundation for Gamble and Hoitz to jump into the spotlight feels like it was made up out of thin air. It’s a problem when even the characters in the movie actively say that things aren’t making any sense. When Danson (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson) jump off the building and die, nobody can understand why they did it. The few explanations that some of the characters offer (e.g., they thought they were invincible) doesn’t hold much water and leave both the other characters in the movie and the audience confused as to why it had happened in the first place.

Much of the blame falls on Will Ferrell who is playing almost the same guy that he’s played in every other movie that he’s ever been in. His big issue is that the shtick isn’t funny anymore (and some would viscerally argue that it was never funny to begin with). But it’s not only the jokes that are bad; there are some elements of Will Ferrell’s performance and character in this movie that are downright abysmal. The whole thing with Gamble and his wife, Shelia (Eva Mendes) is awkward at best and unbelievably stupid every other moment. The sex talk between Mendes’s character, her mother, and Ferrell’s character made me embarrassed to be in the theatre watching this film. The resulting sex scene (without the mother) was absolutely pointless and was only an excuse to show a bit of skin (which was, surprisingly and to the film’s credit, very tasteful). Actually, what was odd about that entire scene was that the brief sexual interlude was much tamer than some of the dialogue between Mendes and Ferrell. 

Speaking of the romantic conquests of Will Ferrell’s character, at the beginning of the movie it is established that the Gamble character is a hopeless loser compared to that of Danson and Highsmith, it seems inexplicable that later in the movie, every beautiful woman has a thing for Gamble. It surprising that they didn’t give Gamble the ability to fly and turn everything he touches into gold. It’s nonsense like this that totally invalidate the authenticity of the Gamble character.

However, if your a fan of Ferrell’s punchlines from nowhere and random screaming then you’ll like this film. Otherwise, you’ll loathe it. It’s because it’s almost easy to forget that Mark Wahlberg is in the movie too. Ferrell’s offensive performance is so overpowering that it completely kills off anything Wahlberg does. Although, it’s not like Wahlberg offers a much better performance. To his credit, he actually tries doing some acting here. But it’s a wasted effort. The script he’s given is horrible and he has little to work with. Even though it seems at times that Ferrell is improvising away from the script, Wahlberg’s dialogue is so poor that he comes off as nobody important.

The Other Guys tries to relieve some of Will Ferrell’s most popular movies. What the filmmakers failed to realize is that if someone wants to see Old School again, they can easily find it on the home video market. Adam McKay directed a waste of time; both to the audience and the people involved with this film. This is a Saturday Night Live sketch that went 105 minutes too long.

☆