Well not only has COVID-19 taken away sports and delayed my favorite day of the year, MLB Opening Day, it has also caused movies to be delayed and theaters nationwide to shut down. Obviously our thoughts and prayers are with those affected and hopefully this will all be behind us soon. But in the meantime, with everyone stuck in self quarantine and practicing social distancing, I thought, "What better chance to start doing a Throwback Thursday review?" I wanted to review a lighthearted, feelgood movie because we don't need anything heavy right now, and something that was available to watch on a streaming service now. My first thought was the True Grit remake with Hailee Steinfeld, but it's not on Netflix. So I settled on one of the best comedies from the last decade - The Other Guys.
The Other Guys is a buddy cop comedy from 2010 starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Michael Keaton, Rob Riggle, Damon Wayans Jr., Dwayne Johnson, Samuel L. Jackson, and Derek Jeter (he was second billed in this thing for 5 seconds of screentime lol). Adam McKay directed and you can watch it on Netflix right now. It has a 60% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, which I think is way too low. I think this movie is underrated and very funny. Sure, as with any Will Ferrell movie, some parts aren't great, but a lot of it makes me laugh out loud. There's nothing really to spoil and it's been out for a decade, so this review will mostly just be talking about some of my favorite scenes from the movie and clip in a few YouTube videos.
The Other Guys starts out with Terry (Wahlberg) and Allen (Ferrell) pushing papers while the hot shot, bad boy cops Danson and Highsmith (Jackson and The Rock) are fighting crime. But when they are KIA, the two mismatched cops get their shot. The start of this movie is very funny. When people think of The Other Guys, most of the time they think of Terry telling Allen that if he was a lion he would swim into the ocean and eat Allen if he was a tuna. That whole speech is hilarious, as is Rob Riggle and Damon Wayans' characters convincing Allen he should do a "desk pop" and fire his gun off in the office which leads to Captain Gene (Keaton) taking Allen's gun and giving him a wooden one.
My favorite scene in the start of the movie is when Terry is at a therapy session with other cops, sharing times when they had to shoot someone in the line of duty. After 6 months of attending the therapy, Terry finally shares that he shot Derek Jeter in the Yankees tunnel during the World Series. While all the other cops yell at him and give him the nickname Yankee Clipper, one of them says, "You should have shot A-Rod!" I lose it every time.
Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg have a great chemistry in this movie and the way they play off each other is really funny. Michael Keaton makes this movie for me though. He is so dang funny playing the Captain of the police force who also works at Bed Bath and Beyond to, in his words, "put a kid through NYU so that he can explore his bisexuality and become a DJ." I think he quotes TLC like four times throughout the movie, telling Allen and Terry "don't go chasing waterfalls" and that he "don't want no scrubs."
Of course, you can't talk about The Other Guys without talking about Allen's backstory. Allen became a forensic accountant (funny enough, I considered doing this when I was in accounting) to have a stable job and wife (Eva Mendes) to escape his college past in which he was a pimp named Gator. The other running gag with Will Ferrell is that Terry is astounded by all the beautiful women that want to be with him. The lady bad guy, Shelia, Christinith, and even Brooke Shields at the Knicks game were all infatuated with Allen.
There's so much more that I could talk about in this movie. Dirty Mike and the Boys wrecking Allen's Prius, Allen telling Terry he learned to drive on Grand Theft Auto and yelling "AMERICA" when he hit the gas, and Terry fighting the "Colombian drug lords" are all hilarious scenes. Overall, I think this movie is a great one if you want to just take your brain out and laugh and some low brow humor with Will Ferrell and Marky Mark. Perfect for an afternoon in quarantine. You can check it out right now on Netflix. I'd like to keep doing these Throwback Thursday review so if you have any other movies you'd like me to watch and write about, I'd love to. Anything on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, or HBO are all free game (I may be subscribed to too many streaming services). Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe to Drive in Double, and remember, don't go chasing waterfalls.
- BH
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