If you who hoped that "The Other Guys" would finally get you out of this miserable summer-movie rut (and a couple of film-critic colleagues hoped this film would do that), don't get your hopes up.
If you're looking for another manically silly movie starring Will Ferrell, look no further. "Guys" has Ferrell reteaming with director/co-writer/frequent collaborator Adam McKay to give us another heavily ad-libbed movie that doesn't know when to quit when it's ahead. It also doesn't know when to quit - but we'll get into that later.
Ferrell plays Allen Gamble, the straight-laced half of a heavily ridiculed NYPD detective team. He's partnered with Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg), a disgraced hothead who accidentally shot Derek Jeter during a game. (Cue laughter and cheers from Red Sox fans.)
Hoitz seriously wants to work on a juicy case that will elevate him from laughingstock back to one of New York's finest, especially since the precinct's all-star supercops (played gamely by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson) meet an untimely - and, because this is a Ferrell-McKay production, wholly ludicrous - demise. Unfortunately, his gun-shy partner would rather stay at his desk and do paperwork. Luckily, Gamble's paperwork leads them to the shady dealings of a financial guru (Steve Coogan), whose Bernie Madoff-style chicanery makes him the target of many dangerous, ticked-off parties.
As far as mocking action-movie cliches and tropes go, "Guys" succeeds. McKay cartoonishly amps up the explosions, car chases and slo-mo shoot-outs to the point where they're quite hilarious on their own. But because this is a Ferrell-McKay film, expect the insanely oddball humor to come one after the other.
I expected "Guys" to be hellaciously ridiculous, which it is in the first half. But the second half is cluttered with too many hit-or-miss gags, bloating up what could've been a tight, short ride. Not to mention that the whole white-collar-crime story, while nicely relevant, seems more heavy-handed than satirically biting.
But "Guys" has the same problem that all Ferrell-McKay films have had since "Talladega Nights": They give everybody in the movie free rein to act like a dang fool. (At least "Anchorman" had Christina Applegate there to play the straight man to all those nutty newsmen.)
And they do. Whether it's Michael Keaton as Ferrell and Wahlberg's TLC-quoting captain or Eva Mendes as Ferrell's nasty-hot, deliriously devoted wife, everybody gets a chance to indulge in some big-screen buffoonery.
Ferrell and McKay's anarchic, inmates-running-the-asylum style of filmmaking may sound like an intriguing approach to making comedies. (It certainly sounds better than the way Hollywood is churning out comedies these days. I mean, have you seen "Dinner for Schmucks"?) But movies like "Guys" prove that Nietzsche was wrong: Out of chaos does not come order.
I will say that "The Other Guys" has more laughs than Kevin Smith's "Cop Out," that other failed excuse for an '80s-style, buddy-cop comedy that came out this year.
