The Other Guys is a comedy film based on the idea that in movies there's the big unstoppable action hero cops, and then there's "the other guys" - the average Joe workaday cops who don't do anything exciting. Two of these other guys are Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. Ferrell is an unworldly forensic accountant, and Wahlberg is a would-be hero cop, demoted to being partnered with Ferrell due to a faux-pas accidental shooting of Derek Jeter.
The two of them get involved in a Lethal Weapon style investigation of Steve Coogan, a dodgy seeming investment banker, motivated by Wahlberg's desire to crack a big case to get his career out of the toilet, and Ferrell's conviction that Coogan's failed to get permits for scaffolding on some properties he's developing. Obviously, there's something much darker going on, but our heroes have no idea what it is.
Of course, this is by the by. The plot is an excuse to spoof the genre, but the whole film is more of a vehicle to showcase Ferrell's trademark surreal clowning. So this is really no more a cop buddy movie than Anchorman was about tv news journalism. And there's the rub. Because this film is far less funny, far less often than Anchorman. Which is not to say that it's never funny, but you can really only expect a good snort of laughter every fifteen minutes, and in-between, the plot's too weak to carry it through.
Overall, not a bad film, but on the other hand, you wouldn't be hard pressed finding a funnier two hours entertainment. Myself, I was listening to The Bugle podcast on my way over to the cinema, and on my way home, and was aware that I laughed more on the bus than I did in the cinema.
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