Will Ferrell & Mark Wahlberg in the movie The Other Guys

A frustrating movie, albeit one with a lot of laughs, "The Other Guys" stars Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as New York Police Department desk jockeys who get a chance to transform themselves into high-risk, maximum-destruction superstars, chasing down a Bernie Madoff-type scam artist and destroying half their city in the process.

For a good hour, this is the picture Kevin Smith was trying to make with "Cop Out."

It's satisfying to see Ferrell take on a more officious, buttoned-down character (though with a checkered past); that way, an actor has somewhere to go with his craziness, as opposed to sustaining a boor's boor, as Ferrell did in "Talladega Nights" and his best comedy to date, "Anchorman."

And Wahlberg's comic instincts, his slow- and quick-burning exasperation, may not carry the subtlety of his superb supporting turn in "The Departed," but they more than meet the demands of this project.

So why does it frustrate?

Because Adam McKay and co-writer Chris Henchy ("Land of the Lost") have overloaded the narrative, stretching it 20 minutes beyond its practical use and mistaking bigger and more explosive with funnier. From "Freebie and the Bean" to "Running Scared" to the "Lethal Weapon" franchise, the challenge with cop-centric action comedies has remained essentially the same: How to balance straightforward adrenaline-rush material with bits you'd never find in a real cop film?

This one begins buckling under its own weight around the midpoint; on the other hand, I'm already looking forward to catching certain asides and riffs again on cable. Early on, Wahlberg's Detective Hoitz regales Ferrell's Detective Gamble with an insult about a lion swimming out to sea to kill some tuna, and Ferrell's response -- a sustained act of literary criticism and literal-minded wind-baggery that grows weirder as it goes -- reminds you how amusing this guy really is. Another gag involves a brawl, conducted almost entirely in whispers, that breaks out at a police funeral. Lovely idea; strong execution. "Is this how you conduct yourself? In a democracy?" Ferrell sputters in another scene. Already we're talking about more laughs than a lot of Ferrell's previous vehicles.

McKay and cinematographer Oliver Wood, who shot all three "Bourne" films as well as "Talladega Nights," push the action as hard and fast as they can, slamming most of the mayhem and dialogue in extreme close-up. It's a somewhat suffocating attempt at keeping the style close to what the movie, occasionally, gets around to satirizing. But size matters, and as with the war-film goof "Tropic Thunder," you wonder if a smaller, scruffier-looking version of the same movie would have yielded bigger comic payoffs.

So, a mixed bag, worth sorting through for things like the tale of the lion and the tuna, which barely makes sense as you're hearing it. That's Ferrell for you: a screen comic who is just enough of a real actor to sell the stupidest stuff with the straightest of faces.

 

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for crude and sexual content, language, violence and some drug material)

Running time: 1:47.

Cast: Will Ferrell (Gamble); Mark Wahlberg (Hoitz); Eva Mendes (Sheila); Michael Keaton (Capt. Mauch); Steve Coogan (David Ershon); Ray Stevenson (Roger Wesley).

Credits: Directed by Adam McKay; written by McKay and Chris Henchy; produced by Ferrell, McKay, Jimmy Miller and Patrick Crowley. A Columbia Pictures release.

The Other Guys Movie Review - Will Ferrell & Mark Wahlberg