Other guys, The

There is some fairness in the world: middle-aged men are getting more attention from Hollywood. Naturally, one key factor accounting for such non-teen marketing savvy is the aging quality of so many former Hollywood action stars. Let's call them The Other Guys, which is what writer-director Adam McKay called his bunch of NYC comic cops.

They're an oddball assortment of fat, floundering or forlorn cops trying to succeed in the shadow of the station's hot-shot pair of self-promoting celebrity cops (Samuel L Jackson and Dwayne Johnson). The station chief (Michael Keaton) is moonlighting in retail to support his son's bisexuality classes, while gullible aged nerd and forensic accountant Will Ferrell is paired with deeply depressed desk cop Mark Wahlberg. He'd accidentally shot a top Yankee player and learnt ballet dancing; Ferrell's character is a reformed pimp who's married a hot ER doctor (Eva Mendes).

Plot developments try frantically to maintain the weird and wacky style, and the opening car-chase mayhem indicates there'll be loads of SFX slapstick for the teens to enjoy en route to the predictably happy end of another odd-couple buddy movie.

McKay and Ferrell, who worked on Saturday Night Live for several years, have produced a caper every two years since 2004 (Anchorman) and their fans may discuss if that was the best of the crop, or Talladega Nights (2006) or Step Brothers (2008). The Rotten Tomatoes scorecard settles the argument: critics overall gave their latest collaborative effort top marks (77%), Ferrell's highest rating other than Elf (84%).

The Other Guys, a silly screwball comedy with some high-speed witty patter, was a success (US$163 box-office gross). Its ludicrously high reported budget of $100 million suggests that everyone involved paid themselves a fortune. That's a cute irony as the plot focuses on multi-billion-dollar fraud, with Steve Coogan playing a wicked Brit financier whose cliche-driven dialogue includes an OTT Gordon Gecko update.

Ferrell presumably misses the era of live-action impromptu comedy, zany improv skits and wild bombast, because umpteen artfully-scripted scenes of such comic megalomania are shoe-horned into the scenario (with Mendes looking understandably nonplussed and plain ugly when she has to join Ferrell in a reprise of "Pimps Don't Cry", a song he and McCay co-wrote).

What begins with some promise of comic originality becomes an irritating and contrived bore, its failings highlighted every time the camera focuses on close-ups of Ferrell's fattening face (which is very frequent, and comically unrewarding). He and McKay will surely work together on a biennial basis as long as they can get themselves US$100 million budgets. Ferrell's fee for his first project with McKay was reportedly US$20 million; he's surely upped the ante since then.

The movie's final irony lies in the snazzy animations during the end credits. As in the trendiest anti-capitalist documentary expose, pointedly diagrammed facts and figures outline the stupendous expansion of the wealth gaps in the USA. I fear many US movie-goers who stay to the end may think the incredible mathematical figures are also jokes.