When the top cops are busy, our only hope is...

The Other Guys directed by Adam McKay


Will Ferrell & Mark Wahlberg attend the Australian premiere on the Gold Coast, August 18, 2010.

For a girl, I'm strangely partial to a good cop movie. Those who know me will tell you I love violent movies. Horror comedies are a particular favourite (think Jennifer's Body, Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead etc). Blood, gore...I froth on that shit. Luckily, I have a select group of friends who I can rely on to see these types of movies with...one of my best friends shares my passion for the hilarious Saw saga. We often meet horrified stares when explaining how "The dude's arm, like, split in half! The bone came through the skin and everything! It was awesome." From horror comedies/actual serious horror movies that are unintentionally funny, we move onto the action movie arena. Films along the lines of Kick-Ass, Sin City, Kill Bill (basically anything that may have previously been a comic book)/...that stuff is totally up my alley. The more blood, the better. The more unrealistic the blood baths are, the higher the entertainment value. Don't get me wrong, I love a good horror movie for its subtlety and mystery as much as the next person, but it seems like they're few and far between these days. The last truly good horror movie I saw was...hmmm. I can't even think of one. Well. There you have it. But I'm getting off topic. Cop movies! They're awesome, as long as they're done right. And by right, I mean that the finished product serves its desired purpose; for example, in the 80s, Die Hard successfully served the purpose of providing Hollywood with a believable hero cop in the form of Bruce Willis's John McClane...incidentally, it also served the purpose of creating a the perfect bad guy, freaky German terrorist Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). This is probably why that movie was such a hit. Then, in the 90s you had Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones serving their purpose as the dream duo; the unlikely partnership defending the universe from aliens which for some reason meant huge bucks at the box office. The point I'm trying to get across is, if the film fulfills its reason for creation, I believe it should be deemed a success. Take Jennifer's Body as a great example; everybody trashed this movie because it was ridiculous. I mean, yeah, it was about a man-eating cheerleader. Literally. But come on! It was supposed to be stupid! Do you really think Diablo Cody, writer of the Academy Award-winning Juno, sat down and thought to herself "Hey. I'm gonna write a deadly serious plot about a girl who gets wrongly sacrificed as a virgin, then comes back to life and starts eating boys for every meal. Yes! The Screen Actors Guild will love this, and then I'll finally get the respect I deserve!" Highly doubt it. She's intelligent enough to realise that this movie was all popcorn, nothing more...but also to know that it works. The sad fact is that most people couldn't recognise this, and instead attempted to pull apart the film, criticising its every aspect. Idiots! A little advice, people: take a movie for what it is, don't try to warp it into something you think it should have been: 99.99% of the time, you'll be wrong. In my opinion, here's where The Other Guys delivered the goods.

Director Adam McKay, Will Ferrel, Mark Wahlberg & Eva Mendes at the Moscow premiere in Russia, September 13, 2010.

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg team up in this (for want of a better word) random cop action/comedy. Allen Gamble (Ferrell) is the new guy in the detective's office...a quiet accountant who enjoys his desk job to an annoying extent. Terry Hoitz (Wahlberg) on the other hand is the miserable one, knowing he lost his chance at glory after accidentally shooting Derek Jeter (by the way, this is the most hilarious side-bar that gets massive laughs whenever its mentioned, which is a lot). The pair are assigned as partners, but they never get to go out on a call because of their respective issues with hands-on police work. Instead, New York's favourite cops P.K. Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson) and Christopher Danson (Dwayne Johnson) get all the action, and all the praise. That is until they're suddenly (and hilariously) out of the picture and Terry is over the moon about the opportunity to prove himself as a real detective. Unfortunately, he has to convince Allen to go along for the ride, which takes a good while since he pretty much hates his guts, demonstrated during Wahlberg's hilarious monologue: "No, I don't like you. I think you're a fake cop. The sound of your piss hitting the urinal, it sounds feminine. If you were in the wild, I would attack you. Even if you weren't in my food chain, I would go out of my way to attack you. If I were a lion and you were a tuna, I would swim out in the middle of the ocean and freaking eat you. Then I'd bang your tuna girlfriend." As hard as it is to believe, the two get past this tense discussion and join forces. The rest of the movie is pretty much just a series of hilarious events that eventually leads up to the grand finale: a day-time, inner-office shoot-off, of course. You may notice I've said the word 'hilarious' a number of times in the above summary...I apologise. There's simply no other way to describe this movie.

Eva Mendes at "The Other Guys" conference at Comic Con in San Diego, July 23, 2010.

Okay, first up is comedy veteran Ferrell. Not much to say here; he's great as Gamble, but it's nothing we haven't seen from him before. Sarcasm, wit-drenched one-liners, and don't forget the implied sing-along (seriously, when's the last time Ferrell made a movie without including at least a short singing number?). Like I said, it's funny but not all that new. What is new, however, is Wahlberg's comedic genius. Whilst he's not a first-timer in the funny-guy ballgame, this is the first time we've really seen him carry a comedy the way he does in The Other Guys. Hoitz is just so pathetic, and he knows it. The whole Jeter debacle continues to follow him around and humiliation is never far behind. His ex-girlfriend doesn't want a bar of him, and his collegues think he's a joke. Wahlberg doesn't often play a loser; he's usually the badass lead role in action flicks such as The Italian Job, Shooter and Max Payne. As we all know, he's good at playing those parts. But I can't get over how well he portrayed Hoitz in all his lameness. Pretty much the only thing that Hoitz has going for him in this movie is that he's superior to Gamble in almost every way. Except for his slamming-hot wife Sheila (Eva Mendes)...all of Hoitz's interactions with her are classic. His disbelief that Allen could score a babe like that is so perfectly acted over dinner one night: "Why are you with Allen?! *pause* I mean...how..did you two meet?" I seriously think that Wahlberg brings out the best in Ferrell, as the funniest scenes with Gamble involve Hoitz. The chemistry between these guys is great, which sounds weird considering Terry despises Allen. I'm not sure what it is, but the hate Terry has for Allen coupled with Allen's sincere hurt feelings over it is just great viewing. The cinema I sat in to watch this movie was in constant uproarious laughter because of this partnership, especially during one of my favourite scenes, where Hoitz drags Gamble out into the hall and pulls a gun on him to make him go out on a call with him: "You won't shoot me!" "I shot Jeter!" "That was an accident." "Was it?" On a quick note, Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson deserve props for their performances, even if they didn't last long. The few scenes they were in were loaded with mirth, and had me and the entire theatre in stitches.

Will Ferrell, Eva Mendes & Mark Wahlberg attend the New York premiere at the  Ziegfeld Theatre, August 2, 2010.

As stated above, cop movies can be awesome but they can also go very badly when they don't allow themselves to be what they were intended. Some need to be serious, some not. The Other Guys scored high points with me because it not only accepted its destiny as a stupid-funny satirical cop movie, it revelled in it. My final word? Mark Wahlberg needs to do more comedies. I can't believe it's taken this long for him to show us how good at it he is.


NOW HEAR THIS: The movie featured some great rnb songs, including "We Trying To Stay Alive," by Wyclef Jean, "Top Down," by Swizz Beatz and great placement of The Black Eyed Peas' "Imma Be." There were a bunch of songs thrown in to this movie that has made them funnier to listen to now, including "Hero," by Foo Fighters, "Reminiscing," by Little River Band, "Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now) by Phil Collins, and "Waterfalls," "No Scrubs," and "Creep," all by TLC (you have to watch to understand the reference). Also, download "Icky Thump," by The White Stripes, "Ooh La La," by Goldfrapp, "Maggie's Farm," by Rage Against the Machine, and "Pimps Don't Cry," by Cee Lo Green. Just because they're awesome.