The Other Guys

Directed by Adam McKay

(PG-13)

***

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Will Ferrell and Adam McKay keep their winning streak alive with The Other Guys, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. The actor has again teamed up with the writer-director behind the hits Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, to create a film as “antic and raucous and fun” as any they’ve made together. Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg play desk-bound cops who finally get the chance to hit the streets and become heroes. Wahlberg taps into his funny side as loose cannon Terry Hoitz. Ferrell, as the nerdy, repressed Allen Gamble, delivers his “richest riff yet on the comedy of conflicted aggression.” The Other Guys brings the laughs, but only for about an hour, said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. McKay overloads his buddy-cop comedy with action sequences, “stretching it 20 minutes beyond” its comic climax and throwing in more explosions than necessary. Despite those flaws, though, The Other Guys is easily the summer’s funniest comedy, said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. Even better, it’s “odder, crazier, and more quietly subversive” than McKay and Ferrell’s earlier films.