Review: The Other Guys

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Imagine some comedy geeks playing a drinking game while conjuring the most ridiculous cop movie ever. Then have one of them with no sense of subtlety whatsoever write it up with more expositive outbursts than any one film should ever have. And then have everyone in the film take every possible joke too far. The result is The Other Guys.

The movie's premise is that there are superstar cops, and then there are The Other Guys. You know, the ones who just can't make the grade. It's a promising premise until it gets overloaded with bad jokes and caricatures, and The Other Guys doesn't let up from scene one, with a preposterous chase and arrest worthy of a Die Hard spoof. Every joke is repeated ad nauseum, not once or twice, but over and over, each rendition more painful than the last, and very few of them were funny. In fact, this reviewer only laughed twice, and had more fun watching other reviewers mimic her flabbergasted expressions.

Director Adam McKay and co-writer Chris Henchy created a script that might have been funny if it wasn't trying so hard to be gut-bustingly hilarious with each joke trying to top the last. In reality, it's painfully the opposite. More than one person left one screening with a pained face from grimacing. It's hard not to compare to worn-out sketch comedy TV, where kinetics try to make up for actual humor. Looking at Henchy's background, he's written a lot of awards shows, as well as co-wrote Land of the Lost, and it shows in the script. Couple that with McKay's background working on other Will Ferrell projects such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Saturday Night Live, and it's no surprise there's nothing refreshing on screen.

The sad thing is that The Other Guys was brimming with talented, charismatic actors, none of which were very watchable, with the exception of Steve Coogan, whose deadpan delivery occasionally worked. Ferrell can be funny and engaging in films like Stranger Than Fiction. Co-star Mark Wahlberg delivers a performance nearly as bad as the one in The Happening. Everyone in fact seems to be delivering explosively melodramatic performances as if they'll be freed from purgatory if they overact as loudly as possible. Given the material they had to work with, and having to vocalize every thought process, they were set up to fail from the start.

There's no point in wasting more time and space dissecting The Other Guys. Suffice it to say The Other Guys is a chaotic Bretchian-esque jumble best seen on late-night TV when you're too tired to reach for the remote.