Release Date: August 6, 2010
Rating: PG-13 (for crude and sexual content, language, violence and some drug material)
Genre: Comedy
Run Time: 107 min.
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Michael Keaton, Steve Coogan, Samuel L. Jackson, Dwayne Johnson, Rob Riggle, Damon Wayans Jr.

After a legendary run on Saturday Night Live and subsequent instant classics on the big screen, Will Ferrell became the breakout comic star of the past decade.  Recent efforts, however, have offered diminishing returns and his latest continues that decline.

That’s not to say it’s a complete disaster; The Other Guys definitely has its moments (an early face-off about “Lions vs. Tuna” comes to mind).  For anyone who loves Ferrell’s brand of absurd man-child humor, you get more of that here—but only in fits and starts.  If his early films felt consistently inspired, this one follows the trend of feeling more like a work-for-hire.  Ferrell’s just coasting here, as is the whole movie.

The premise is simple and has potential.  Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg (Date Night, The Departed) play the titular “other guys” Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz, schlubby everyday New York City cops who don’t make the headlines or get the glory.  That distinction goes to Detectives Danson and Highsmith (Dwayne Johnson, Samuel L. Jackson), two rule-breaking one-liner hotshots who are loved and admired by all regardless of how much mayhem and destruction they leave in their wake.

Their buddy-cop bravado outshines everyone else in the department, especially Gamble and Hoitz who are true opposites.  Wahlberg’s Hoitz is a disgraced adrenaline junkie from the Bronx who’s paired with Ferrell’s (ironically-named) Gamble, a straight-laced accountant desk jockey who’s never left the safe confines of the office, let alone fired a gun, and is an easy stooge for pranks.

Read the entire The Other Guys Movie Review at Crosswalk.com