The funny guys

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg shine in a new comedy helmed by Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights). The duo plays a couple of hapless desk jockeys working for a big city police force, beset by constant ridicule by their more heroic counterparts. Though typically prone to err on the side of bathroom humor, the Ferrell and McKay combo works well this time out, and the material is a hilarious mix of wit and well-scripted physical humor.

The plot centers on two youngish cops (Ferrell and Wahlberg) saddled with desk duty who become weary of living in the shadow of more popular and active star officers. After some disastrous false starts, they set out to make a name for themselves by cracking a serious case. Naturally, they are worthless amateurs with some exceedingly bad luck, and their initial efforts come to naught. Eventually, however, they make some headway, and the revenge of the nerds comes to full fruition.

Ferrell is at his straight-man best, and Wahlberg demonstrates his own surprisingly refined comedic gifts as they make simple police work look as absurd as penguin training in Abyssinia. Reality is skewed, or rather, misconstrued as they pursue robbers in a Keystone Cops-cum-Mean Streets fictive reality.

Michael Keaton is terrific as Captain Gene Mauch. His tried deadpan delivery is just what the role requires, and few well-known actors have the stuff to pull it off without breaking character or stealing scenes.

The rest of the cast (including brief appearances from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson) are little more than placeholders and characters of office and law enforcement stereotypes, but they do their part admirably. Eva Mendes is adequate as Dr. Sheila Ramos Gamble, Ferrell's inexplicably love-struck wife.

The writing is intelligent for a change, and the gags are smarter than anyone familiar with McKay's oeuvre would have any right to expect. He seems to have salvaged a decade's worth of quality material and worked it all into a single film - which would make us the happy beneficiaries of his largess after enduring a string of crappy comedies. Who knew he could write?

The film does some justice to the reality of everyday police work, driving home the message that when regular cops strive to be heroes it all too often causes problems for civilians and professionals alike.

The Other Guys is also an intermittently biting send-up of modern office politics. There are the poor saps who do the actual heavy (paper) lifting, and then there are the lucky few who stand up to take the credit and advance accordingly. If the film can be said to have thematic elements, they arise from McKay's commitment to having a laugh at hypocrisy in the workplace.

The critical reception thus far has been largely favorable, but there's a running theme in much of what the peddlers of opinion have been saying. The chorus has been repeating variations on the following: This has been a bad year for comedies, and McKay has fashioned a film that is noticeably better than most. Such praise is something that casual moviegoers ought to take with a grain of salt.

Still, one needn't be responsible for enduring every flop that comes along to notice that offerings have been slight of late. Call me a cynic, but mainstream comedy these days is something of a commercial cuckold to the art of crafting an intelligent joke. McKay is not exactly an ideal antidote for those sickened by this trend, but those of us determined to do a little giggling in a darkened theater must take what we can get. Relatively speaking (and the key word here is "relatively"), The Other Guys is high art. It's silly, forgettable and largely pointless, but at least it's funny.

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com