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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

The Other Guys

THE OTHER GUYS (Adam McKay). 107 minutes. Opens Friday (August 6). For movie times, venues and trailers, see Movies. Rating: NNN


The Other Guys is a buddy cop comedy starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as a pair of mismatched New York detectives who stumble onto a massive corporate fraud case. But really, the whole thing’s an excuse for director Adam McKay to insert Ferrell’s demented straight man and Wahlberg’s bewildered hotshot into as many bizarre situations as possible – and to thumb his nose at the idea that farce has to be structured.

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This isn’t to say that The Other Guys goes as Dada as McKay and Ferrell’s last collaboration, Step Brothers – or as balls-out crazy as their most enduring collaboration, Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy.

This film has elements that could pass as the stuff of a “real” cop movie: Samuel L. Jackson and The Rock as New York supercops, Michael Keaton as a put-upon captain, an opening action sequence that could serve as the climax to a Die Hard movie. It’s just that every time the movie stops to take a breath, Ferrell and Wahlberg start fighting over the CDs in Ferrell’s Prius or arguing about whether a lion would beat a tuna in a fight.

Plenty of stuff happens. Not all of it works, but enough of it does that you can enjoy the absurd running gag where Steve Coogan’s slimy financier plies the clueless Ferrell and Wahlberg with bribes, or the other running gag where Ferrell’s dumpy, literal-minded accountant is somehow catnip to stunningly attractive women, or the other running gag where Wahlberg keeps calling himself a peacock who needs to fly. As quasi-satirical action movies go, it’s no Hot Fuzz, but it’s a damn sight better than Cop Out, and frankly, that’s probably all you need to know.

normw@nowtoronto.com

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