A Right Pair of Peacocks

Cine Review: THE OTHER GUYS
12A – 107mins – 2010
Written by: Chris Henchy and Adam McKay
Directed by: Adam McKay
Starring: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Keaton, Steve Coogan, Eva Mendes, Rob Riggle, Damon Wayans Jnr., Ray Stevenson, Samuel L. Jackson, Dwanye Johnson
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[SPOILERS] Five minutes into this buddy-cop genre spoof and Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson have just smashed their Chevy through the side of a double decker bus during a routine drugs bust. Guns are blazin’, hoods are poppin’ and tyres are screechin’; it’s hyperbolic mayhem and the A-listers are overacting their asses off, but it’s funny stuff, particularly when Jackson wisecracks the line: “Did anyone call 9-1-Holy-Shit?!” I went into the cinema with zero expectations, but after this full throttle opening, my hopes were propelled.

Big mistake, for this was The Other Guy’s comedic zenith and very soon it fell flat on its face on a concrete sidewalk. As the film’s title implies, this film doesn’t focus on the shoot-first-ask-questions-later celebri-cops who make the front pages and win the hearts of the community, no matter the carnage. This film is all about the little guys, the pencil-pushers, the office bods who get nada recognition for the stacks of paperwork they fill out behind the scenes.

Enter Detective’s Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Marc Walhberg). They will be your, ahem, “entertainment” for the following 100-odd-minutes, although they will never come close to matching the brilliance of the warm-up act. Yes, sure, I understand that this is the point – Gamble is a naïve, play-it-save cop who idolises the big boys but not enough to follow in their footsteps; Hoitz is frustrated by the lack of action he gets after being demoted following a firing incident – but I also expect some laughs from a comedy.

I’m not over exaggerating – indeed I may be being slightly generous – when I say I cracked a lowly trio of smiles once Gamble and Hoitz took centre stage. I’ve never been a huge fan of Will Ferrell’s confused adolescent style of comedy (half the time he just says unfunny things in an elevated and pathetic voice), but even I was expecting more from his fourth collaboration with director Adam Anchorman McKay.

My prevailing issue with The Other Guys is the repetitive nature of the humour. Gamble isn’t cool, he certainly isn’t a looker, yet somehow he gets all the hottest women and fails to recognise just how lucky he is to have landed a wife as smoking as “plain” Eva Mendes – but this point is drilled into us so often that you can almost anticipate when it will be recycled next.

The same is true of Hoitz’s flawed analogy of him being a peacock who wants to fly and their Captain’s (Michael Keaton) innumerable coincidental references to TLC songs. In moderation they would have been a hoot, but after a while they begin to bore and I spent most of the film deadpan and counting the wrinkles on Michael Keaton’s face (good god hasn’t he aged?!).

The plot is barely worth talking about, such is its predictability. In fairness writers Henchy and McKay did attempt to spruce up the age-old underdogs-uncover-major-corruption-but-nobody-believes-them-until-it’s-nearly-too-late shebang with the twist that multi-billionaire David Erschon’s (Steeve Coogan; underused) lottery scam is actually being taken out of the NYPD’s retirement fund, but this merely convolutes the light-hearted tone with no comedic reward.

In a CR@B Shell: After a hectic and hilarious opening, The Other Guys slows to the beat of a very different film. Ferrell’s regular routine wears thin and Wahlberg’s shouty straight man irritates in this buddy-flop yawn-fest.
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Copyright Sin in Central City

DVD Review: THE SPIRIT
12 – 98mins – 2008
Written for the screen by: Frank Miller
Adapted from the comic book series by: Will Eisner
Directed by: Frank Miller
Starring: Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson, Louis Lombardi, Sarah Paulson, Dan Lauria, Paz Vega, Eric Balfour, Stana Katic
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Following the runaway success of the stylised punk noir of Sin City (2005) and the gritty macho force of 300 (2007), you would be forgiven for thinking Frank Miller, creator of the comic books upon which the aforementioned films were based and co-director of the former, could do no wrong. Then, however, he decided to take somebody else’s line-drawn superhero creation and desecrate any originality by stamping his signature limited-palette stamp all over a celluloid adaptation.

The nerve.

Visually, The Spirit craves to be Sin City 2, if Miller ploughed ahead with a Robert Rodriguez-less, muted, family affair lacking in quality, edge and, well, spirit. It’s the film of a graphic novel, minus the graphic, attempting to win audiences over as an outlandish, tongue-in-cheek genre parody (character names Sand Saref and Plaster of Paris speak for themselves), yet for all of its ‘witty’ dialogue, flamboyant ‘flair’ and flashes of deliberately hammy spoofery, it takes itself far too seriously to succeed.

The minimal plot concerns murdered cop Denny Colt (Gabriel Macht; unendearing) who is brought back to life with the power to take a beating and heal at superhuman speed. Donning a face mask, black shirt and ‘iconic’ red tie, Colt becomes the eponymous Spirit, who keeps his beloved Central City safe from crime and flamboyant madmen such as his arch-enemy, the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), who is also imbued with this inflated tolerance of bodily torture and, for reasons unknown, will not shut up about eggs (!!).

Also on the green screen scene is Denny's childhood crush, the sexy, diamond-lover San Serif (Eva Mendes), who is on the hunt for the mythological Golden Fleece, unaware that her beloved bling is in an identical chest to the Octopus's desired treasure: the Blood of Hercules, which would extend his indestructibility towards demi-god status. What are the chances?! Quite high, apparently, as they are both found – chained together – at the bottom of a sewage plant swamp, and each party is enraged to have gone away with the wrong prized procession.

Isn't that always the way?!!

It's a farcical plot seemingly derived from a 1950’s Looney Tunes vignette, but without the laughs. This isn't through lack of trying, however: the Spirit and the Octopus trade heavy blows throwing in everything including the kitchen sink; the Spirit falls from a skyscraper only to get his trouser waistband caught on a gargoyles head in line with a lift full of giggling girls; the Octopus dabbles with cloning and creates a bouncing foot with a human head.... Frankly, it's cheap and groan-worthy balderdash.

The film's supporters – I'm sure there are some, somewhere – will argue that this is precisely the point, that Frank Miller wanted to create a self-aware piss-take of the overblown, ostentatious comic book superhero movie. Yet, while there are suggestions of such ‘ironic’ humour – the Octopus's army of dumb and defective cloned cannon fodder (all played by Louis Lombardi); the Octopus and Silken Floss (Scarlett Johansson) playing Nazi dress up to deliver long-winded exposition to the captive hero – ultimately, The Spirit falls far from the mark. It's a rambling and directionless mess of an adaptation, filled with flaws – Jamie Foxx's confusing and unexplained appearances as Spirit-saving goddess (?) Lorelei Rox, for example – which you're laughing at, not with.

Nobody is going to persuade me that Frank Miller purposefully made a shit film.


CR@B Verdict: A sad and sorry slurry of recycled style over sub-par substance: The Spirit is bombastic dreck which should never have been brought back to life in this form. Avoid.
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