The Other Guys fails because it abandons this reality barrier. Everyone in the film is playing for jokes and going outside believability to do it. Film doesn't pay attention to making its characteres REAL, it just concentrates on making them act up. Most noteably, Wahlberg's yelling at random is not believable. But mostly individual scenes. Jackson and the Rock jumping... sure it's funny, but also stupidly unbelievable. Wahlberg confronting his ex at the dance studio is totally out of character for a person in that situation. The stuff with Ferrell insulting Mendes. His ex and her husband running 20 miles to charge the car. There's movies like Airplane make the 'ridiculous' work, but the Other Guys isn't it. For the most part it tries to play in reality, but then steps out of it for a cheap joke.

This is TERRIBLE. Last week I saw two comedies in Date Night and Dinner for Schmucks, that work because they make sure the barrier of reality is maintained, despite a ridiculous plot in the former and crazy characters in the latter. The former movie had everyone play relatively straight, the latter had half the characters ludacris but to balance it out had the rest as straight as possible.

The Other Guys fails because it abandons this reality barrier. Everyone in the film is playing for jokes and going outside believability to do it. Film doesn't pay attention to making its characteres REAL, it just concentrates on making them act up. Most noteably, Wahlberg's yelling at random is not believable. But mostly individual scenes. Jackson and the Rock jumping... sure it's funny, but also stupidly unbelievable. Wahlberg confronting his ex at the dance studio is totally out of character for a person in that situation. The stuff with Ferrell insulting Mendes. His ex and her husband running 20 miles to charge the car. There's movies like Airplane make the 'ridiculous' work, but the Other Guys isn't it. For the most part it tries to play in reality, but then steps out of it for a cheap joke.

The lack of believability has damning consequences. We don't buy the characters as real, so we don't care what happens to them, if they're in danger, if their relationships are in danger. We don't care about the crime plot because nobody involved feels reality. When the jokes happen, they're not coming from characters, they're coming from actors. Theu didn't feel like characters being funny, they felt like Ferrell and Wahlberg mugging and overacting. All the drawn out dialog felt like writers trying to find as many ridiculous things for the leads to say and then giggling at their own brilliance. Characters acting slapstick works... when they're characters. When they're actors on screen it's cringe worthy.

A waste of time. Will be one of the year's worst.

F

Admitedly I have only seen about 1/3 of Date Night, but to describe anything within that film as "realism" seems quite silly to me.

The end result is a movie where I don't care what happens and I'm not laughing aka, a waste of my time

C+


The Other Guys is the first movie directed by Adam McKay that I have seen and I certainly hope that the others are not as much of a letdown as this one. This film had a really great cast for a comedy to boot and did pretty much nothing with it. Samuel L. Jackson and The Rock were a hoot in their parts, but I really didn't think their demise was funny and it came way too early in the film. For the rest we have to deal with Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as the straight man to Ferrell's doofus. After The Departed, we should all know that Wahlberg can be funny and act well, but this was not the case for him in The Other Guy. He just seems misplaced most of the time. Ferrell does his best and can score a few laughs, but this doesn't get close to his roles in films like Old School or even The Producers. I did like the scenes with him and his wife a lot, though as well as his "wild" backstory. Nicely done.

Michael Keaton is another remarkable performer here who elicits some humor as well. Steve Coogan and Anne Heche are completely wasted in this film. Why did Heche do it anyway? Such a thankless role! Moreover, for an action comedy, the action in this was really very lame. Overall, the film was mildly entertaining, but not nearly as fun as the premise and the marketing made it seem to be.

I really did like those closing credits, though!