The Other Guys

After a break from Inception, I've finally been to the movies again to see The Other Guys.

Before any of you ask, no, I did not go see Dinner for Schmucks. I like Paul Rudd and I heard the movie was bad, so I didn't want my image of him to be downgraded.



Category: Comedy (Mainstream)

Premise: After two superstar cops, Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson) and Danson (The Rock), are hailed time and time again by the city of New York, the desk-jockey duo detectives Allen Gamble and Terry Holtz (Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg) try to step into the limelight by taking on a high-profile case about shady investment banker David Ershon (Steve Coogan)

Zer(o)verview:

First off, let me preface this by saying that comedy is very difficult to review.

I'm sure everyone has heard a joke that ends with "You had to be there". That's what reviewing comedy is like. You can't always read a joke and find it funny. It's the delivery that really counts.

Anyway, to the review.

Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell make surprisingly dynamic leads, with Will Ferrell's ability to deliver ridiculous dialogue with extreme seriousness, and Mark Wahlberg's ability to take everything too seriously. No, really. Do you remember M. Night Shmalyan's "The Happening"? Remember Mark Wahlberg was the main character? Remember the scene in the greenhouse where he tries to make a truce with the plant? Yeah. The seriousness that Mark Wahlberg delivered in that particular scene carries throughout this entire movie, and that makes up for most of the jokes, in my opinion.

The movie starts off extremely strong (there's a particularly funny speech about lions and tuna that almost made me blow Dr. Pepper all over myself) but bottoms out about 20 minutes in and never really picks back up. Sure, there are funny moments here and there, but nothing so hilarious that people will remember it for the rest of the year.

As I said earlier, comedy is really hard to review because it's the delivery of the jokes that counts. Unfortunately for The Other Guys, most of the jokes are predictable, and therefore fall flat before they have a chance to grow (again, in the beginning, this doesn't happen). In fact, the beginning may have set my expectations too high for the movie. The opening had a lot of really funny moments that made me think that the entire movie was going to be hilarious, and aside from a few kind of funny moments here and there, it really wasn't.

If you're looking for the best comedy this year, it won't even come close to the mark. There aren't even any hilarious quotes that I intend to overuse to death, which is extremely unfortunate. But, I'll concede and say that it's worth the going to a $5 matinee or whatever they have where you live to go see it.


GROUND ZERO:

I didn't expect the greatest comedy since Anchorman (and yes, Anchorman is one of the best comedies of all time, I don't care what any of you say) walking into this, but I expected more then I got, especially after an extremely solid exposition to the movie. Like I said, it's worth matinee price, but you wouldn't be losing out on much even if you waited to rent it from Red Box in a few months. Overall, it's funny, but I didn't laugh as much as I hoped.


3 out of 5 (I would give it a 3.5, but I'm not gonna start using decimals and it wasn't good enough to merit a 4, so consider it a 3 1/2 out of 5 if the number of stars it gets is a big deal-breaker for you)