The other guys review

The Other Guys

Review by Zulfi

4/5

Comedy comes in many colors. And in case of ‘other guys’, it is a completely new hue. It is not your usual run of the mill humor. Many gags in this movie start slow but gather a massive wallop at the end. There are many instances in this movie where rolling on the floor laughing is just mandatory.

                It is about two NY detective partners, Alan Gamble and Terry Hoitz. They are generally referred to as the ‘other guys’, as they are someone completely ignored by the rest of the department and remembered very off handedly. When two of the most revered detectives are killed in a tough assignment, the dept has the responsibility of filling those large shoes. And our two heroes are the pair, which come last in the draw, if they are considered in the draw at all. Terry Hoitz is a hot headed stocky cop, who thinks some muscle bound action is an obligatory part of a day’s routine. Alan Gamble is a nerdy tall guy, with oodles of information on everything starting from the point of a pin to the flipper of a whale. But he prefers sitting behind the desk rather than the brash field work. When he is given a rape whistle as a humiliating mark of his ineptness, he rather dons it as part of his costume rather than getting put out by it. Hoitz hates this in his partner, but the latter doesn’t mind the other’s anger. When they go after famed capitalist David Ershon, who Gamble suspects of fraud and embezzlement, things turn sour and extremely hilarious.

                The movie gains humor from many points. One is the partnership of Gamble and Hoitz. It’s a surprise seeing Wahlberg paired up with Will Ferrell. It is a completely different dice play. But they complement each other very well. With their completely opposite personalities having nothing in common, Hoitz prefers to hate his partner. His sarcastic word stings don’t penetrate the indifferent and timid skin of Gamble. It is in the desperation of Hoitz at the idiocy and docile nature of his partner, where we see humor. The manner in which they assume to be filling the shoes of the deceased dazzling duo of the cops (Samuel L Jackson and Dwayne Johnson) is humorous. Infact, the latter duo’s death is hilarious too.

The approach of McKay (and Will Ferrell, who is the writing partner in many of his movies) with the comedic situation is always novel. McKay and Ferrell had donated their share to the modern world of histrionic comedy with the likes of movies, Talladega Nights- Ballad of Ricky Bobby, anchorman, stepbrothers etc. their comedy comes in the surprising nature of it where you least expect it. There is a hilarious funny scene when Gamble goes into the history of how he met his wife. Well. None meets their wife like he does in an ER where she works as a nurse and encounter him with something in his somewhere. I had heard a joke once that a guy fell for a girl looking at her ears, but Sheila falls for Gamble at whatever love is blind reason there is to be. Reading this you could make out that the story doesn’t entail children below 15 as its audience. Hoitz, who is hotheaded and frustrated by being tagged with the nincompoop of a partner, gets cross eyed whenever Gamble comes across a gorgeous lady and all of them start chasing him for his number and some ‘desire’ to talk. Gamble goes through the reason for it again surfing through his past and when you arrive at the end of his story that ladies just want him to look after their economic issues, Hoitz confirms whatever you are thinking and you break into muffled and suffocating laugh if you have some family member beside you. And then there is the waltz of Hoitz, done just sarcastically because he thinks it is perverse. The writing persists in the similar lines whole throughout the movie and there isn’t a moment’s break during this two hour long episode.

Steve Coogan revs up the fun playing the embezzling finance mogul with his winsome attitude and even bribing the two of the detectives, who are determined to do him in, repeatedly. The script is by default the substrate here which is blown out of proportions by the odd innocence of Ferrel and the disbelief of his partner regarding him. If we are going the humor in this way, we are rolling on the floor uphill or ascending.