I caught a screening of writer/director Adam McKay‘s “The Other Guys” over the weekend. Politics aside, let’s just say that the Will Ferrell action-comedy is nothing close to their previous collaboration, “Step Brothers,” which is actually kinda brilliant. Amusing, but not ever terribly funny and surprisingly cheap looking for a production budget reported to be $90 million, “The Other Guys” is also an unqualified box-office success where Ferrell man-childs like he always does, Mark Wahlberg (an actor I like) confuses LOUD with funny, and the idea of riffing on 80’s action films — using tropes that include everything from a lonely saxophone score to all the familiar plot beats — is already a trope itself, having been done before.
Adam McKay and scarf
There are, however, a couple of memorably funny scenes, including a deliriously inspired and plot-turning leap off a very tall building and Wahlberg’s reaction when he first meets Ferrell’s wife, played by the striking Eva Mendes. For at least 75 of the 107 minutes you’ll have a smile on your face and enjoy a few honest laughs even as you wonder why the cinematography’s so bright and all the expensive action is unnecessarily hyper-edited.
Amusing devolves into outright tedious in the third act, unfortunately, when the plot turns hard-left thanks to a confusing, uninteresting, unfunny, and unnecessarily preachy investment banking plot and stakes that never rise above having to stop a wire transfer. Without spoiling the specifics (though I will below), let’s just say that never for a second did I believe that what might have been lost in that wire transfer wouldn’t have been immediately made up within days using taxpayer money in the form of a bailout. Which brings me to the now infamous “Other Guys” end credits:
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So what’s your favorite part of that power point presentation? Mine starts at the 1:50 mark when we’re supposed to sit aghast at the:
CEO to average employee pay ratio.
Me? I just sat there and wondered what was the:
DIRECTOR OF “THE OTHER GUYS” to average Columbia Pictures’ employee pay ratio.
My second favorite part arrived at right around the 2:15 mark when we’re supposed to be even more outraged as we watch the average executive salary climb to over $11 million per year — you know, as told to us at the end of a movie starring the guy who was paid $20 million for the 90 days he spent making “Talladega Nights.”
And here comes the SPOILER ALERT….
McKay wants us to believe that he’s all about comedic bravery, that he’s Speaking! Truth! To! Power! on behalf of the little guy-taxpayer and not his limousine liberal social-engineering cause. And yet, a big part of the plot device in the director’s evil capitalistic money scheme, is fretting over a police pension fund. Now, I’m second to none when it comes to wanting our first reponders to be well compensated for the important and dangerous work they do, but really? A public pension fund is shown as a good thing in a film that positions itself as on the side of the little guy?
For those of us actually paying attention, it’s not just Wall Street stealing our money, and it’s not just fatcat too-big-to-fail CEOs. What the left-wing propagandist McKay intentionally does here is portray in a positive light the other dark side of our current budgetary crisis: wildly bloated public pensions muscled into being by corrupted unions who are as driven in a quest for selfish gain as any AIG executive. But because public union money is used to fund and support Democrats and union members disproportionately vote for Democrats, to further the leftist cause, McKay doesn’t just ignore this side of corruption, he presents it as something virtuous.
Public unions are second-to-none in their contempt for the little guy-taxpayer and coupled with the success they’ve enjoyed at the public trough, thanks only to the liberal politicians they support, these pensions are now THE major flash-point in budgetary emergencies all over the country, most especially in New York where — wait for it, wait for it — “The Other Guys” is set:
These and other sweeteners are part of the reason why the city’s annual pension payout has increased 900% since 2000. And that’s before health care benefits are included. For every dollar police officers contribute to their retirement, taxpayers contribute nine. Mayor Bloomberg’s office warns that if one thing pushes New York City into bankruptcy again – 35 years after the last time – it will be pensions.
Nothing about this Ponzi scheme in McKay’s end credits. I must’ve missed the section on Fannie and Freddie, as well.
McKay might dress funny, but he’s no idiot. Quite the opposite. In fact, he’s such an effective left-wing propagandist he’s smart enough to deny that what he’s doing is in any way “leftie“:
Some extreme right wing site started targeting me and saying I’m a leftie, and I told the guy – I actually had an exchange with – ‘I’m not a leftie, I just don’t want to be ripped off. I don’t want wars started in my name. How is that leftie?
Methinks BH might just be the extreme right wing site he’s talking about. And I love how he uses the phrase “targeting me.” You see, when we extreme right wingers engage in a little spirited political debate, it can never be just that. Because the Left has no arguments, they have to shout us down with words like racism or mean-spirited or targeting. And this coming from a guy who’s made a career with millions upon million of dollars at his disposal to target his own political opponents though big studio films, his site “Funny or Die,” and as a writer for “Saturday Night Live.”
McKay also thinks he can say “I’m not a leftie” as though that just makes it so. But maybe that means the two of us can at least agree that being a leftie is something worth being embarrassed about. What he might not know, however, is that possessing the ability to shamelessly say something so brazenly untrue is actually the clearest sign you are indeed a leftie. And so is trashing George W. Bush 19 months after he left office.
Yes, our non-leftie director who Speaks! Truth! To! Power! makes damn sure that when we’re introduced to his investment banking villain (a wasted Steve Coogan) that we see a photograph of him with Bush.
Which is really, Speaking! Truth! To! The! Out! Of! Power!
And McKay might bravely speak truth to the out of power again now that he’s circling around a biopic about Republican political consultant Lee Atwater.
Brave souls, these Hollywoodists. Anyway, you need not take my word when it comes to McKay’s leftie-ism. Just read the words of that brave speaking truther himself.
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