A while back I wrote about a movie that I thought would end buddy cop movies forever. Yes, COP OUT was truly that bad. And this is coming from a fan of both Kevin Smith and Bruce Willis. But the buddy cop movie has been born again with two unlikely leads in Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. And they’re bringing it to life as the anti-thesis of the buddy cop heroes by being THE OTHER GUYS.
THE OTHER GUYS starts out like every other buddy cop film made in the past with two mega heroes in the forms of P.K. Highsmith (Samuel Jackson) and Christopher Danson (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) chasing a car load of criminals. Suffice to say that they costs the city millions, do a ton of damage to vehicles and eventually blow up the front of one of the Trump Towers all in an attempt to arrest this carload for some minor offense. They’re declared heroes and return to the precinct to let everyone know that they’re leaving the paperwork for the rest of them to fill out…for the other guys.
Allen Gamble (Ferrell) is fine with this. He’s there to back up the page grabbing hero’s crumbs and take care of the dirty work they leave behind. But his partner Terry Hoitz (Wahlberg) isn’t as pleased. He wants to take on the bad guys on the street. He was on the rise at one time, heading for the limelight when he accidentally shot…well I won’t say because that ends up being on truly funny joke.
Gamble and Hoitz are left behind to do paperwork and in a way not be much in the line of detectives; even if that’s the area they’re assigned to. That all changed when Highsmith and Danson jump off a building while trying to catch a group of crooks who used a zip line. Again, what happens is hilarious and I don’t want to spoil it but it results in the heroes deaths.
Now the city needs a new team of heroes and Hoitz wants it to be a part of that. But he can’t stand his partner. Gamble has a lead on Sir David Ershon (Steve Coogan), a businessman who has building construction going on but hasn’t filed for permits for scaffolding. Neither of them realizes that in trying to serve the arrest warrant for this minor offense the two of them will find themselves taking on a top level criminal.
Along the way they face opposition from their captain (Michael Keaton), the D.A. and various other law enforcement organizations. They even find their case turned over to the S.E.C. where their lead agent is Ershon’s lawyer. Taken off the case and demoted to lower positions, the only way to get the bad guy is if they do it on their own terms.
So much for the bare basics of the movie. Surrounding this plotline are all sorts of jokes that are some of the funniest I’ve seen in some time. Enough so that on occasion you find yourself using the pause button until you stop laughing or to back up and witness what made you laugh all over again.
One running joke is that every hot woman that the duo comes across wants to jump Ferrell’s bones. The first glimpse of this is when he takes Wahlberg home to meet “the old ball and chain”. His wife is played by Eva Mendes, looking quite attractive and doing everything she can to please him while he tells Wahlberg how plain she is. All Whalberg can do is keep asking, “No really, who is she?” He can’t believe this is Ferrell’s wife. And the same holds true for every attractive woman they meet who tries to get Ferrell’s number.
Wahlberg’s character is the stock shoot first and ask questions later kind of guy. In his mind every criminal ties into some drug deal. Ferrell is the more cerebral one who looks for deeper crimes which seem to stare him in the face and he still doesn’t get. They make the perfect pair, combining to make a winning team. Or at least you would think they would. Instead they more bumble into the crime being committed and are fortunate to simply survive.
There are all sorts of comedy at play here. The verbal jokes are funny, the physical humor is hilarious and the stabs at the standard buddy cop films are spot on. I’ve never been a huge fan of Ferrell feeling that he got too caught up in playing the seemingly same character over and over again. But this is one time that he shines in a role meant for him. And Whalberg with his demands to be let lose to fly like a peacock and constant referencing to things he learned as a child to use to bully the kid down the block is funny in his own way.
I wasn’t sure I would like this movie. I was afraid that it was going to turn out like most movies with a decent trailer where the best scenes were offered there with tons of filler surrounding them. That doesn’t turn out to be true. Sure those scenes are funny, but the entire film has funny scenes from beginning to end. This movie is not just a movie to watch a single time but to add to your collection. Its one that I know I’ll end up watching more than once.
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