The Other Guys

After success with movies like Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and Step Brothers, comedian Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay have proven themselves as some of the top comedic geniuses of our generation. This time around, the duo teams up with Mark Wahlberg to bring us The Other Guys.

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg (formerly Marky Mark of the Funky Bunch) play two pencil pushing detectives who don't get out much and only want to live up to their idols, played my Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson (who looks like he just got off the set of another Shaft movie). They plan on doing this by uncovering a huge scandal involving the lottery, a multibillion dollar company, and snotty British-American capitalists.

Honestly, there isn't much of a plot here; only the obscure illusion of a plot that only exists so the writers have something to go with and hold the movie together. In reality, the movie doesn't really hold together all that well and eventually the plot becomes so burried in spoof antics of the cliché buddy-cop film, that we stop carring about the plot all together and just wait for the next laugh out loud moment.

This isn't McKay's best directed film. There are a lot of awkward cuts that don't make sense and a lot of the action scenes are choppy to the point where it is difficult to follow along, especially the opening chase sequence with Johnson and Jackson.

But in the end, this is a comedy and we are willing to let everything bad about this movie slide just because it is so gosh, darn funny. Will Ferrell shines in this film, especially, as the nice guy that we all like to like. Ferrell can chalk this preformance up there with his funniest characters like Ricky Bobby and Ron Burgundy. Wahlberg gets a few laughs out of us as well as the angry guy who always yells, but his yelling gets tiresome by the end of the movie. Sam Jackson and Dwayne "the Rock" are also very funny in their ten minutes of screen time; it's not that long but it is definitely worth it.

I must say, however, that by the second half of the movie, the laugh out loud moments become less frequent and it starts to run out of steam by the end, as it starts referring back to jokes made in the first half of the movie that have lost their novelty. There are a few very funny, very fresh jokes towards the end of the movie, but there just isn't enough of them.

In the end, the first half of this film is some of the funnist stuff I've seen in a movie and it makes the entire movie worth paying the $8 for. If you like Will Ferrell and movies like Anchorman, then you will definitely like this movie.

This movie is so funny that I give it a solid recommendation.

The Other Guys gets two buddy cops outta five.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

J.P:

Like Sasquatch, the Lock Ness Monster, and the 1969 NASA moon landing, Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop has people wondering if this movie is for real or not. However, when it comes right down to it, does that even matter?

This documentary follows Thierry Guetta, a quirky Frenchman with an obsession for filming. Guetta befriends an array of grafitti artists including Space Invader, Borf, Shepard Fairey (the man who came up with Obama's 2008 election poster), and, of course, Banksy. Guetta eventually sticks with Bansky while the two of them embark on a wonderous grafitti expedition. After a while, Banksy convinces Guetta to turn the camera over to him while Guetta tries his hand at art, with an unbelievable turnout.

Whether this film is legit or not, everything about it, for the most part, feels authentic and that is an astonishing feet for any "prankumentary", if indeed that's what this is. The real decade-old footage mixed in with the seemingly spontaneous humor of the ensemble makes this movie feel like the real deal, which I guess you could pin on the grade A acting, if indeed it is exactly that.

Like I hinted at earlier, this movie is funny, really funny. The dimwit humor of Guetta, cupped with countless attacks on Guetta's dimwit ways, makes this movie very enjoyable. If nothing else, this movie provides the audience with something (rather someone) to laugh at. But what is great about this movie is that it keeps the audience laughing while also keeping the audience engaged; we are constantly deciding for ourselves what art is and where we draw the line between vandlism and self-expression.

In the end it does not even matter if this film is a true story or not; it's funny, it's engaging, and it is just plain old fun. Besides, we get plently of enjoyment out of fiction anyways, don't we?

4.5 cans of spray paint outta five

Travis:

My favorite movie of this year, Exit Through the Gift Shop begins with street artist "Bansky" claiming that the film is "not Gone with the Wind, or anything." This is true. Those movies have nothing in common. However, it's a sweet film that utilizes the format of a documentary in order to lull the audience into a false sense of security. Because the world is used to documentaries being, or at least claiming to be, completely true, the audience begins to take whatever Bansky says as fact. But is it?

5 tubs of tapes outta 5.