The Other Guys (2010)

Watching Step Brothers the previous night got me in the mood for another Will Ferrell film. The Other Guys is his fourth collaboration with director Adam McKay so I had high hopes for this. Also I never thought I would see the day my partner sat down to watch a film with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson in it but here we are!

The Other Guys is a parody of the tired genre of buddy cop movies, you know the type: Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop. All the clichés are here ready to be ripped into. The Rock and Samuel L Jackson play two hero cops. An all action intro throws them into a car chase that sees their car lodged in the side of a bus then catapulted from it, flying at the bad guys, Jackson blasting away. This brilliantly sends up the over the top nature of action films. The macho jock characters they play provide some of the best moments in their knowingly dumb action scenes.

Allen Gamble (Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) are the polar opposites or the 'other guys'. A police pairing so bad that they are the joke of their force. Events conspire to put them on a huge case that could salvage their reputations. They constantly bicker throughout, providing Ferrell the opportunity to indulge in his usual random style, never more so that an argument over who would win in a fight between a lion and a tuna fish! My main gripe with this is Wahlberg's acting. Is there a worse actor than him in the mainstream? This is a man so wooden I did begin to think his style was intentional, part of the parody maybe. Then I remembered watching him in The Happening and realised that this is as good as it gets from him. That aside he does have some good lines but I think they could have been so much better delivered by someone else.

There are some fantastic scenes where this film mocks the genre, like the good cop/bad cop routine where Ferrell fluffs his part as the good cop and plays the mental cop. However after a good start it deteriorates into a fairly dull police investigation starting with scaffolding regulations and moving onto some embezzlement. The laughs do thankfully continue throughout, with some good supporting performances from Michael Keaton as the police chief and Eva Mendez as Ferrell’s impossibly hot wife.

I did feel that this film tries too hard to be random. It never quite has the magic of previous films by the pairing of Ferrell and McKay. Some scenes felt very unnecessary as they try to stick to the pattern of cop movies laid down by this genre. Yet it does deliver a good parody overall and has some fantastic one liners. Ferrell seduces his wife at one point by shouting "I'm gonna do you grandpa style" and "I'm gonna break your hip!" Well worth a watch but sadly not quite up to the standard of what has come before in my mind. I hope this does not mark a decline in Ferrell's career as he starts to get a bit 'old for this shit'.

6/10

Step Brothers (2008)

I suppose I should just say I am a bit of a Will Ferrell fan before getting in to this review. If like me you thought Anchor Man was one of the funniest films you had seen in ages then you should stop reading and go watch Step Brothers now. NOW! If you like random comedy involving grown men acting like angry teenagers then you will find this funny. Ferrell has teamed up with director Adam McKay for the third time here (previous films were Anchorman and Talladega Nights). Anyone who has seen their other efforts will know just what to expect.

Step Brothers is a story of two 40 year old men, Brennan (Ferrell) and Dale (John C Reilly) who live with their parents. They sit around in their fantasy worlds, indulged by parents that cannot say no to them. That is until these parents get married to each other and move in together, forcing Dale and Brennan to share a room. Yes the plot is stupid, yes the main characters are idiots, and yes the humour is puerile. The plot does wander down some fairly pointless parts that take away from the laughs, but the madness of Ferrell and Reilly more than carry the shortcomings.

Imagine two teenage boys forced into this situation, hating each other at first but eventually realising that they have lots in common, including some of the following: doing karate in the garage, building bunk beds, reading porn mags and hating Dale's younger brother Derek. Ferrell and Reilly throw themselves into the parts worryingly well; their bickering and one-upmanship alone make this film worth watching. Derek (Adam Scott) is fantastic as the over achieving ego maniac, so sadistic he makes his family sing an A Cappella version of Sweet Child 'O Mine in their car! The madness of these characters is given perspective by their sane parents who try in vain to turn them into responsible adults.

The story does fall flat in places where the story tries to play itself out. However this film is so filled with the random one-liners and toilet humour of the previous McKay/Ferrell collaborations that I was more than happy to put up with it.

7/10