THE OTHER GUYS (USA 2010) **
Directed by Adam McKay

THE OTHER GUYS are Allen Gamble (Will Farrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg), two mismatched New York City detectives.  They decide to bust a crooked investor David Ershon (Steve Coogan) to become the city’s top cops they idolize dream to be.  Naturally, things don’t quite go as planned.

For a buddy cop movie, the Walberg Ferrell pairing is not the best but works quite well with Farrell the comedian and Wahlberg the straight man, though Wahlberg gets in quite the few laughs himself.  Take the films funniest bit when the two argue about the lions and tuna of the animal kingdom.  After clearly losing the argument, Wahlberg in frustration and desperation, just throws his coffee on Farrell.

Too many jokes (running jokes) are repeated till the laughs run out.  One is the detectives losing their shoes.  The others include Allen getting all the gorgeous women and Terry’s crush on Allen’s wife.  Director McKay keeps the jokes coming fast and furious, though many are misses, if one can listen to the audience’s laughs.  Many get just less than a quarter o the auditorium’s laughter.

It is odd that the best moment of the film occur at the start with the antics of the Top Cops played by Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson.  There is definitely another movie to be made here, possibly even a funnier one.  The audience cracked up when the two attempt to jump 20-storeys into the bushes only to land, fall to their death on concrete.

The supporting cast fare well, especially surprisingly Eva Mendes as Allen’s hot wife.  One wishes Brit comedian Steve Coogan was given more funny lines to deliver.  But the most hilarious bits belong to Samuel L. Jackson at the start who steals all the scenes he is in.

At one point in the movie, the Will Farrell character asks the Walberg character why he is shouting all the time.  He answers that the reason is that he is always trying to hard and he still gets everything wrong.  If the question asked then why director McKay keeps working some of the jokes repeatedly to death, the answer is probably that he is trying so hard to keep the film funny, that he keeps trying the same jokes all the time as everything else keeps going wrong.