The Other Guys

From director Adam McKay comes this nigh unwatchable comedy revolving around a pair of mismatched cops (Well Ferrell’s Allen Gamble and Mark Wahlberg’s Terry Hoitz), with the convoluted storyline detailing the partners’ efforts at solving a financial mystery with millions of dollars at stake. McKay’s notoriously freewheeling sensibilities, used relatively well in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Step Brothers, prove a consistent and utter impediment to one’s enjoyment of the film, as scene after scene has been infused with a loose, obviously improvised vibe that’s ultimately nothing short of disastrous. The most obvious problem here is the pervasive lack of laughs within each and every encounter and interlude, with the various actors’ increasingly desperate efforts at wringing laughs from hopelessly stale material resulting in an atmosphere of pure tedium – with Ferrell’s long and aggressively unfunny rant about why a lion could never successfully attack a tuna standing as an emblematic example of everything that’s wrong with The Other Guys (ie in which alternate universe is something like that supposed to be amusing?) There’s subsequently never a point wherein the viewer is drawn into the surprisingly complicated and consistently uninvolving narrative, which effectively cements the movie’s place as a misfire of impressively epic proportions.

* out of ****