It's been a while since we've gotten a good buddy-cop movie.  I haven't seen this year's Cop Out (heard it was indelibly awful), but I did decide to give The Other Guys a go.  Director Adam McKay comes up with a part straight-up, part satirical take on the genre that at times doesn't work, but mostly does.

Opposites attract, or in this case, extreme opposites.  You couldn't find two more mismatched characters than Ferrell's Gamble and Wahlberg's Hoitz.  Both actors are ensconced in their patented movie personas here: Ferrell's amiably gullible, man-child routine provides an easy foil for Wahlberg's hot-tempered, always angry shtick.  A hearty grab bag of running jokes and gags ensues, from Ferrell's raw animal magnetism toward the fairer sex, to Wahlberg's pining for Gamble's wife as played by Eva Mendes, and a firing mishap involving Derek Jeter.  ("You should have shot A-Rod!")  Michael Keaton's constant spouting of TLC-related quotes is the best kind of random hilarity.  Usually an emotively restrained moviegoer, I was surprised to find myself laughing out loud at a lot of the comedic shenanigans on display.

It's a shame, then, that the movie gets a bit too long in the tooth by the second half.  The action becomes rote, and a needlessly complex plot involving a deceptive white-collar crime begins to formulate, bogging down the pacing rather than propels it.  The two leads bouncing off of one another eventually gets tiresome, their transition from uneasy colleagues to mutual partners happening a bit too slowly.  It's too bad they wrote the Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson characters out so quickly; I suspect their sustaining presence might have provided some much needed kick to the proceedings at this point.

The Other Guys is a decent return to the buddy-cop pictures of yore, but it doesn't rank among the likes of Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon, or Hot Fuzz.  The uneven focus hurts it some, and with the case of Ferrell and Wahlberg, sometimes there's too much of a good thing.