Directed by: Adam McKay
Starring: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Dwayne Johnson
I walked out on one other movie in my life, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Now here's the other one. This movie is a comedy dead zone. I can't even muster up enthusiasm to shit all over it, even though it robbed me of about two hours of my life. (I'm counting the previews and the pre-show entertainment also.) It sapped me of my love for movies and my energy, for a bit. I walked out thinking of all the ways the $18.00 I spent for admission and food could've been better spent or even saved. I vowed to become more economical by making sure I wait for movies to come on DVD a lot more often instead of seeing them in theaters.
How is this such a woebegone movie? This one is a misstep almost from the start. Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson have some fun in the beginning as hotshot cops who destroy half a city block trying to bust some guys with a 1/4 ounce of weed on them. They are probably having fun because they knew that they would leave the scene soon and don't have to appear in the rest of the film.
The rest of The Other Guys is about two desk jockeys (Ferrell and Wahlberg) who try to act like real detectives and bust bad guys. They also try to act funny in a script that doesn't know if it wants to spoof cop movies or be a cop movie itself. It spends a lot of time on a plot that is increasingly irrelevant as the movie wears on. Boy, does the movie wear on.
There are other talented people in the movie. Wahlberg, Eva Mendes as Ferrell's wife whom Ferrell believes is only OK-looking. She is only OK-looking, but Wahlberg carries on like she's a goddess. Michael Keaton is their boss, Capt. Gene Mauch, and it's hard to believe he stopped playing Batman to appear in dreck like this. (Gene Mauch, by the way, was the Phillies skipper who oversaw the 6 1/2 game lead collapse in 1964, and I know how much Phillies fans consider that funny to this day). Oh, and Captain likes to unwittingly use the names of TLC songs in his everyday speech. There were at least three jokes in which the Captain quoted a TLC song and was called on it. If anyone can tell me why this is funny, I'm all ears. British funnyman Steve Coogan also appears as the villain the guys chase but even his involvement is murky. I think at the point I walked out, everyone was shooting at him and the guys were protecting him.
I don't know. I'm sure there are other many better films that don't get the distribution deal this one did or even find their way to the big screen. Somehow, The Other Guys made it to a few thousand theaters in its opening weekend while The Hurt Locker opened in a few hundred and had to depend on word of mouth to get it a wider opening. How do films like this get greenlighted? What possesses its actors to star in it, except for the work itself? Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are busy actors who have other things on their plate and should've passed.
I'm not an executive at the movie studio that greenlighted The Other Guys, but something tells me the guy who greenlighted it won't be doing it for much longer.
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