The Place Beyond the Pines

The Other Guys

Directed by Adam McKay.
2010. Rated PG-13, 107 minutes.
Cast:
Will Ferrell
Mark Wahlberg
Eva Mendes
Steve Coogan
Michael Keaton
Damon Wayans Jr
Rob Riggle
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
Samuel L. Jackson
Natalie Zea

After the death of the city’s two most heroic cops, Det. Hoitz (Wahlberg) decides it’s time for he and his partner Det. Gamble (Ferrell) to step up and fill the void. The problem is heroism doesn’t come easy for these gents. Hoitz is a hothead, itching to get into some real action while Gamble’s name is pure irony since he’s perfectly content to sit at his desk all day, every day.

The vast majority of people reading this will either love this movie or hate it to no end. In other words, it’s a Will Ferrell comedy. Over the top stupidity is the default mode of humor. Occasionally, something slyly intelligent sneaks onto the screen. If you’re already laughing at the stupid stuff, you’ll howl when something smart happens. If you’re not already laughing, these will be the few occasions you’ll chuckle, just a bit.

Ferrell returns to the familiarity of his best known characters. He’s well meaning and high-spirited, but also a bit neurotic and certainly naïve. Of course, in every buddy cop flick, the buddies have to be polar opposites. Therefore, Wahlberg plays Hoitz as high strung, ready to jump into the fray, but still generally down on himself for some mistakes he’s made. Their contrasting personalities is just the first of the action flick clichés put through the ringer. There are many to be skewered and The Other Guys tries to hit as many of them as possible. My favorite being Gamble’s rant on people coolly strolling away from explosions in the movies.

Knowing that this movie is aware how dumb it is may be the key to enjoying it. If you take it seriously, either as an action flick or a comedy, you’ll be severely disappointed. If taken as a riff on the action-comedy genre then you might have fun with it. Even so, I will grant that some jokes either go on too long or simply fall flat right away. While it’s not one of Ferrell’s best, it definitely has its moments. This movie succeeds in most areas where Kevin Smith’s Cop Out tries and fails miserably. TOG actually works in some areas.

There is one thing TOG takes seriously. Unfortunately, that one thing is product placement. The brand-name dropping and label shots reach distracting proportions. Perhaps worst of all, it often feels like a really long commercial for the Toyota Prius. Everyone in the movie cracks jokes about it, but when push comes to shove, she performs like a champ. I’m still not even thinking about buying one, so there.

In the end, this is a take it or leave it sort of picture. It’s exceedingly dumb, but in enough of the right spots. If you’re a glass half full type and think dumb can work, take it. If you think that dumb is just dumb and should be ignored, leave it. Better yet, how much do you like Will Ferrell?

MY SCORE: 6.5/10

The Women

The Women
2008. Rated PG-13, 114 minutes.
Director: Diane English.
Starring Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Bette Midler, Candice Bergen, Carrie Fisher, Cloris Leachman.

Plot: When Mary (Ryan) finds out her husband is cheating on her with perfume sales clerk Crystal (Mendes), her friends and her mom try to guide her through the tough times. Remake of the 1939 film of the same name.

The Good: We have a cast of rom-com all stars giving it their melodramatic best. Each of the ladies makes the most of what their roles have to offer. The pacing and humor are major plusses. It's not fall-off-your-chair funny but it does elicit some laughs. Combine that with a script that pluckily pushes us along from one girl talk scene to the next and you get a fairly quick moving affair (I know, bad pun given the movie's premise). Also a number of recognizable, some even iconic, actresses turn up in bit parts including Cloris Leachman, Bette Midler, Candice Bergen, Carrie Fisher and Debi Mazar.

The Bad: What starts off as a daring artistic choice ends up gimmicky and frustrating. That choice is deciding to not have any males in the movie. In a movie centered around a crumbling marriage, its hard to come off as anything other than man-bashing when it refuses to even show a man. There aren't even any male extras (more on that in a moment). This is illuminated most when you think about Alex (Jada Pinkett Smith). Putting aside the reality that she comes off like a token black, we see she's also the surrogate man. She has what could be a man's name, she's a lesbian so she's obviously into women, a bit of a slacker who parties too much and is generally straight-forward with her views. She is every bit an attempt to give male viewers someone to relate to. And she also helps maintain the ladies only motif by taking our crew to an all-lesbian restaraunt. This scene and the street scenes are filled with beautiful female extras (told you I'd get back to this) and appear solely as an effort to hold guys' attention. The same seems true for the casting of Mendes who's part could've been played by any number of starlets. However, by not having any males at all to project onto we get a strange phenomena. Men in the audience feel attacked and female viewers can only unsatisfyingly beat up a faceless enemy. Well, in the end (spoiler?) there is one male character shown but it feels like a slap in the face. It's like the filmmakers telling us "This is all you get, now be happy with it."

The Ugly: This is a completely different movie if our girls pick somewhere else to get their nails done.

Recommendation: This is pretty much for fans of rom-coms. Once you peel back the complicated layers you'll see its the same old stuff Ryan, Messing and the rest have been doing for years. The difference is that those other movies make men caricatures and have them follow the same developmental arc while this one dispenses with them completely and doesn't even pretend to care to give them a chance to put in their two cents. This is interesting at first, but wears thin about halfway through.

The Opposite View: Bob Bloom, Jounal and Courier (Lafayette, IN)

What the Internet Says: 4.8/10 on imdb.com (5/22/09), 13% on rottentomatoes.com, 27/100 on metacritic.com

MY SCORE: 5/10