LITTLE ROCK — There’s an intriguing, if largely unexplored, subtext to Adam McKay’s action comedy The Other Guys. It’s that not everyone secretly envies the alpha male cowboys who dominate our popular culture - that some guys are happy sublimating their egos and just being part of the team.
Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) would seem to fit that description. He’s a forensics accountant for the New York Police Department, happy in his desk work, a goofy dude who drives a Prius and is so nerdy that his hot wife (Eva Mendes) reads as a sight gag. Now, because this is a movie, we know that Gamble will eventually be forced out of his comfort zone, and that he’ll sooner or later be served up as at least a parody of the grim dealer of slo-mo, balletic lethal justice we recognize as the heroic police detective trope.
Still, for the first hour or so of The Other Guys, the philosophical divide between Gamble and his reluctant partner Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg), a would-be hotshot tethered - because of an overzealous trigger finger - to (emasculating) a desk, makes for an interesting dynamic. Hoitz wants desperately to get back in the field,chasing the action, while Gamble reasonably just wants to do his job, connect the dots and be of service to his department.
While I recognize that it’s ridiculous to think this way - Ernst Lubitsch is as dead as wit - there might be some fun in a movie about a forensics accountant; I imagine the work might be made to seem interesting, especially in the era of Goldman Sachs and Bernie Madoff (topical developments McKay nods to before veering off into presumably safer shallows). But if you’ve seen the trailer - and even if you haven’t - you can guess what happens here.
First, however, the Police Department’s star detectives, Christopher Danson (Dwayne Johnson) and P.K. Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson), have to exit in a (uneasily satisfying) blaze of hallowing stupidity. And then some ultraviolent droogs (led by the formidable Ray Stevenson) have to target the reckless financier (an underused Steve Coogan) that Gamble has identified as a more prosaic sort of offender. And Michael Keaton has to deliver a winning, if funny weird, performance as detective Captain Gene Mauch, a character with the same name as a former Phillies and Montreal Expos manager. (No doubt this is intentional, but the joke eludes me.)
If The Other Guys is better than it has to be (and it’s top-notch in some areas, including the stellar car crashes and rolls and in its supporting cast, which is studded with quality actors with recognizable faces), it’s still not as good as most of us might like. It’s enjoyable enough, but the real highlights of the movie come in the asides, the quirks and a few actorly grace notes.
Ferrell, of course, is less an actor than a brand at this point, and McKay - who collaborated with the star on the successfully surreal frat comedies Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby - is charged with protecting the franchise. Still, Ferrell manages some of his best work in a while, especially in Gamble’s less manic moments.
But the heavy lifter here is Wahlberg, whose angry Hoitz (Hoitz?) isn’t far removed from some of the characters he has played “straight.” I ran across a critic who opined that Wahlberg had heretofore shown little sense of humor in his film work. Really? Didn’t the guy see The Departed? Or Boogie Nights? Or even Wahlberg’s fine comedic turn in the otherwise regrettable I (Heart) Huckabees? The best thing about Wahlberg’s acting is that he’s reliably funny.
In short, you could do worse for a summer action comedy, even if The Other Guys eventually comes dangerously close to becoming the kind of generic buddy cop film it means to parody. It’s a quality entertainment product, one with at least a seed of conscience (near the end, Captain Mauch assures Hoitz and Gamble that the storied Danson and Highsmith weren’t really very good cops) and the best song about pimps since Hustle and Flow.
MovieStyle, Pages 31 on 08/06/2010