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And it’s just a pity we don’t see more of them. The dynamic super-duo soon become victims of their own bombast, leaping off a high-rise building when pursuing a gang of diamond-stealers. God knows what they imagined would cushion them, but in a hilarious slow motion exercise they fall to their deaths, thus turning the audience’s expectations on their head. Instead of serving as a cautionary tale about how buying into your own legend, coupled with super-charged machismo, can only lead to tragedy, however, their deaths create a vacuum of arrogant stupidity in the NYPD, which every up-and-comer yearns to fill. Cue The Other Guys: Mark Wahlberg, an aggressive street-cop who was demoted for shooting a celebrated baseball player in a fit of nerves, and Will Ferrell, a boringly outrageous forensic accountant who inexplicably attracts beautiful women. Together, you know they’re destined for greatness.
Their mission, informed by Ferrell’s auditing skills, is to track down and arrest some token Brit baddie (Steve Coogan) for some nefarious stock market dealings and international confidence tricks which are never fully explained. We’re not even sure if Coogan’s baddie is really a baddie – helpless, charming and stalked by a psychopathic corporate handler from Australia. The comedic goods, as you would expect, are supplied mostly by Ferrell, still practicing his mild mannered everyman who is underneath a boiling pot of absurdity, ready to spill over at any moment. Likewise, Wahlberg brings his trademarked angry-man-who-shouts-a-lot persona to the table, and the pair have plenty of funny moments – the most hilarious being an argument over which would triumph in a fight: a lion or a gang of tuna fish. In the end, they become the established pair of strutting and dysfunctional police heroes we always knew they would be.
Overall, The Other Guys is a funny movie that doesn’t work quite as well as you feel it should. It has the potential to be several funny movies, if only it would make its mind up which one it wanted to be and prune its excessive running time. There’s an interrogation scene where Wahlberg plays bad-cop, and Ferrell, confused as to his role, plays insane bad-cop, throwing Coogan over the desk and destroying his office. In a sense, that confusion sums up the whole film. Wahlberg is supposed to play the straight man against Ferrell’s madness, and yet Ferrell’s character is the straight man of the two, played against Wahlberg’s anti-social volcano. If they had cleared their respective roles up, the film may have been a lot smoother. The same goes for the more confused parts of the plot. Otherwise, The Other Guys remains essentially solid and very entertaining fare.
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