Have you ever known, based both on common sense and the horrible wrenching feeling in your gut, that you were in an abominably horrible place? Have you ever been in such a place, and yet surrounded by peers who laughed merrily with the torment? That was me whilst viewing The Other Guys. I was a long figure in the fourth row tearing his hair out over fare that was making all three or so other people in the cinema laugh raucously.
It would be childish of me to run screaming up and down the street declaring this to be the worst movie of all time, but seeing as I've already done that, I suppose I may as well say this is the worst movie of the summer. By far. I place most if not all blame squarely on the writer, and honestly, every other aspect of this film is really an impressive effort: strong direction, particularly in the visual department, strong acting with Wahlberg being his typically awesome self and Ferrel giving the most natural and well timed performance one can for such awful jokes, and aside from the occasional editing hiccup, it really seems that all involved with the production of The Other Guys was determined to give their best effort to create a good movie out of an awful script. This feat is not impossible, as anyone whose seen the first Superman movie can attest, but it is incredibly difficult, and this film is a great example of why. No matter who's delivering a bad joke, it's still bad; no matter how talented your "gun-fu" choreographer is, he won't be able to make your audience care about whoever is narrowly escaping death.
So what is so awful about the writing that all the excellent effort put forth by those depicting its content cannot over come? The shorter, and far more insulting version, goes like this: it's like the people who gave us Ren and Stimpy attempted to make a parody of buddy cop flicks (a genre that, need I remind you, no longer exists outside of parodies). To elaborate, none of the characters, from Wahlberg's angry straight-man to Ferrel's nerdy paper pusher act in any kind of sensical manner. The movie quickly sets into a pattern: introduce a scenario so whacky it's completely incongruous, have our two leads react to it with neurotic alien dialogue and anger respectively, throw in a series of awkward and equally non-sensical jokes, then get the leads out of there pronto and move them onto the next insane set-piece asap. It's complete insanity plus gob-smackingly senseless reactions times blinding fast pace. But the fact that the movie moves along quickly doesn't by any means mean that it's plot is truly moving; it's just running around in circles from bad jokes to craziness while the plot sits directly below all of this separated by a mile deep sheet of glass; you can always see it and know exactly what's going on, but it's kind of fuzzy and wonky and you're not going to actually get down there and get involved with it for a long time.
The Other Guys is one of the worst kinds of movies in that it's a waste of time for all involved, it looked really good in the trailers so its awfulness comes as a sucker punch and it may still make a lot of money, and it has more bad jokes than the Veggie Tales Bible (which mercifully does not yet exist). Yet in another sense, it's of the best kind of movies, in that it's inspiring. It's inspired me not to count on any summer movie season to stay mediocre and never stray into abject horribleness. It's inspired me to not focus so much on directors- as opposed to writers- as the deciding factor in how good a movie will be. But most of all it's inspired me to write another, much better movie, about a frustrated film critic who goes on a shooting spree. I'll call it: The Other Guys Made Me Do It!
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