Review This:: The Other Guys

The Other Guys
Rated PG-13
Directed By Adam McKay

2.5 Stars

This seems like one of those movies that was so close to working but then just... didn't. (Read "The Spy Next Door") I feel like that is how a lot of McKay's films are, who had suck blazing success with Anchor Man and such limited return on a movie like Step Brothers.

At this point Will Ferrel has already proven himself with flicks like "Stranger than Fiction," so it's got to be the writing and directing. Ferrel is a funny guy who has become a great actor, so the problem has to be elsewhere.


That being said "The Other Guys" is still a funny movie. It has its own list of quirks and repeatable tirades by both Ferrel and Walhberg (Lion vs. Tuna) and the quintessential exchange that makes you cringe and laugh and wonder if you should really be watching this (when grandma is ferrying love messages between husband and wife."

Micheal Keaton plays a great Captain figure, who alternately wants to be called Gene and Captain in an attempt to differentiate between his two careers-Police work and the Bed Bath and Beyond. I felt like somehow they weren't letting Keaton out enough. And maybe if they had he would have stolen the show, but he is another incredibly funny guy who I feel got a little short changed in this. But I love Keaton, so maybe that is tainting me a bit. Hey, I even loved Multiplicity.

Ice-T the O.G., narrates--which is fitting and somehow a funny commentary on Ice. But it works because he takes the lines so seriously.

Part of my hang up with this movie is that it is one of those, like Step-Brothers, in which the main characters or most of them exist in this different world from everyone else. It works in Anchorman because everyone is in the same place. There are no characters who look at the wacky antics of others and go "huhn?" It breaks the mood of the movie and it confuses the issue.
Over all thought it's a funny flick and just what Ferrel and McKay have done several times in the past.