The Other Guys

The first thing you need to know about The Other Guys is that the plot concerns…well, nobody. Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are NYPD, buttoned-down and trigger-happy, respectively. Razzed by their macho colleagues for being desk jockeys, they stumble upon a major financial crime. But as with much of writer/director Adam McKay's work, the movie is really about gags and Ferrell's inspired comic riffing. The comedy is hit-or-miss, but McKay has never been afraid to push things to the brink of anarchy, and when he puts Ferrell and Wahlberg in a room, talking about tuna battling lions or fancy bottled water, the movie does its job, though iit feels a bit hampered by the constraints of the genre. It's hard to work up much interest in the plot when at any moment, Eva Mendes, playing Ferrell's wife, might burst into song about how "Pimps Don't Cry," and McKay is much better at enabling Ferrell's comic madness than he is at staging car chases and shootouts. Also, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg got there sooner with Hot Fuzz, and made a more cohesive film that basically said everything there is to say about buddy-cop movies. While The Other Guys delivers its share of laughs, it doesn't quite sustain the comic heights of McKay and Ferrell's previous collaborations.