The Other Guys - What Did You Think?

I'm a fan of the off-kilter humor of director Adam McKay, whose newest film The Other Guys opens today. The movie teams up Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell as two of those "other guys" on the police force, the dudes do the behind-the-scenes work that allows the stereotypical supercops to strut their stuff. But when they get an opportunity for them to move up the bureaucratic food chain, will they be up to the task, or will they bungle it horribly?

McKay's last few films have been pretty successful at the box office, but the same cannot be said of Mark Wahlberg, who in my opinion hasn't done anything substantial since 2006's The Departed. Does his pairing with Ferrell produce comedy gold? Is the film outrageously hilarious, or a horrible misfire? Hit the jump for some of my thoughts, and feel free to leave your own in the comments. As always, assume that spoilers lie after the break and in the comments.

I found The Other Guys to be a thoroughly entertaining, inconsequential buddy cop film. The film has a great supporting cast and some memorable gags that I'm likely to be recalling with fellow fans for quite awhile. In particular, Michael Keaton stars as a TLC-line spouting captain who's seen this kind of stuff way too many times before, and proves that he has comedic chops this summer beyond playing Ken in Toy Story 3. Also, the wonderful slow-motion scene when Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson jump off the roof while Foo Fighters' "My Hero" blares in the background is probably the most I've laughed in a theater this year.

But Wahlberg I found to be totally insufferable. I understand in this type of film there needs to be a straight man to act as a foil for the goofier partner, but Wahlberg seems to have taken this advice to the extreme. His whiny, grating portrayal of Terry Hoitz has almost no redeeming qualities. When he did the same shtick towards the end of Boogie Nights, I felt bad for Dirk Diggler. Here, I just got annoyed. Ferrell generates a substantial amount of hilarity, particularly in the scenes he has with his character's impossibly hot wife (played by Eva Mendes), but the moments when I laughed at Wahlberg were pretty rare.

In any case, I had a great time at the theater, even if I did find that it focused a bit too much on the details of white collar crime towards the end (truly, this film has the most bizarre end credits sequence I've ever seen for a buddy cop comedy). What did you guys think?