The Other Guys.

I went to see this one on impulse. I usually stalk the movies I want to see for a long time, ensuring that I'm going to like them... For this one I just saw the trailer during the summer and thought it could be quite good. OK, I did check a few reviews first...

Another point was that I had never watched a Will Ferrel movie (only saw parts of Elf, which I found surprisingly entertaining, although not quite hilarious), so for my culture I just needed this. And I like Mark Walhberg. And Michael Keaton.

I had a slight worry coming in that I wouldn't be in on the jokes. There's nothing worse than going somewhere to laugh and ending up not laughing. In some occasions I do worry like that which is weird because I didn't worry for Shaun Of The Dead or Hot Fuzz or Scott Pilgrim (no idea why those titles popped into my head EDGAR I LOVE YOU (IN A SORT OF MANLY WAY)). But I guess they weren't really marketed (I hate that word but can't find another one) as "funny movies", just movies with a few laughs in it. Anyway.

Fortunately I did have a few frank and good laughs there.

The movie uses the reverse formula of the supercop-action-thriller (which would be the losercop-action-comedy). It's similar to KICK-ASS in the sense that KICK-ASS is a comic book movie that focuses on the "normal guy" instead of a super hero, here it's an action thriller that focuses on the normal cop instead of the super one.
And some very cool things come out of that, as well as a few totally hilarious moments (which come handy since that's what we were here for in the 1st place).

The one thing that I regreted was that with those few moments I laughed my face off, I wished the movie had been funnier overall. Not that the rest isn't funny, quite the opposite actually and if anything it's always satifying, but it's just that it's not AS funny.
Expectations are such a pain...

For the rest, I'd say it's all good, Will Ferrel seems to play mostly the same type of roles, but he does it brilliantly, Mark Wahlberg is excellent as the frustrated angry cop that wish he could shoot anything and I have to put a special mention to Michael Keaton (didn't know about TLC, but a brilliant idea).
There are even a few good action sequences thrown in the mix!

Oh yeah and the soundtrack is good (although I'm obviously biased towards anything that uses RATM or The White Stripes) and I enjoyed very much the educationnal ending credits, listing some of the most memorable financial scams in history...

So all in all, a good movie. Could have been better I guess, but it gets the sympathy vote with all those side great ideas...