Slated for release on August 6, 2010, “The Other Guys,” written by Adam McKay and Chris Henchy and starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg (whose “funky” credentials expired a long time ago), offer viewers a film that is:
“Set in New York City, … [and] follows Detective Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell), a forensic accountant who’s more interested in paperwork than hitting the streets, and Detective Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg), who has been stuck with Allen as his partner ever since an embarrassing public incident with his quick trigger finger. Allen and Terry idolize the city’s top cops, Danson and Manzetti (Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson), but when an opportunity arises for the Other Guys to step up, things don’t quite go as planned.”
No big deal. We see these sorts of cop comedies all the time: Opposite personalities are forced to work together. They constantly clash. They bungle assignments. Then they come to an understanding and manage to save the day.
A sneak peek at the script tells us that there are a few moments that will irk conservatives, including a “hilarious” reminder that we have a “black president” and that it’s time to stop stereotyping, even though there’s no stereotyping involved in the scene. Get it? Ha ha. But that’s all typical for this kind of in-your-face, over-the-top comedy film.
Quick question, though: Who are the villains? Now there’s where things get interesting. Are they Islamic terrorists? Of course not. Sure, jihadists are responsible for much of the carnage we hear about all over the globe (not just the events on 9/11 and further attempts at jihad here in the U.S.), but to liberals, Muslims are considered a protected “minority” (all 1.5 billion of them worldwide) because a Republican president dared to call their bluff and thus they are treated with kid gloves by Hollywood and liberals in general. I’m surprised the bad guy’s name in 1994’s “True Lies” hasn’t been changed in a revision from Salim Abu Aziz to Bill Jones or something similar.
Are they domestic terrorists, a la William Ayers and his sweet little wife Bernardine Dohrn and their merry band of pranksters? Certainly not. People who try to violently subvert the system by bombing government buildings are held in high regard by the left and not to be trivialized by making them cartoonish bad guys in a cop comedy.
Okay, then, how about the old standby villains – Eurotrash terrorists as seen in films like “Die Hard,” “Nighthawks” and just about any Bond film you can mention? Nah. Been there, done that. This is 2010, baby – it’s a new decade in a relatively new century, so we have to keep up with the times. According to the script, the villains in “The Other Guys” are…drum roll please…
Bankers.
Director Adam McKay and Scarf
Yes, bankers. Our brave detectives discover near the end that the villain, Ershon, they’ve been chasing has a sinister relationship with a number of banks who have received bailout funds that are finally showing signs of recovery. And not only has Ershon lost billions of dollars entrusted to him, but it seems that none of the terrible things he’s done are illegal because of a bill passed in 2001 regarding international banking.
Who was president in ’01? Oh, right. Coincidence? I’ll leave that up to you. THE INHUMANITY!
BUT WAIT…THERE’S MORE. And no, it’s not two Shamwow! for the price of one:
A “strange guy” approaches Detectives Gamble and Hoitz and tells them that Ershon is just a small fish in a big pond. It seems that not only are Ershon and his friends in on the dirty money, but lobbyists will soon descend upon Washington like locusts, making sure that any regulation that could put the brakes on their activities will be stripped out of existence.
LOBBYISTS! HIDE THE CHILDREN! RUN FOR THE HILLS! No, I’m sure they’re not talking about lobbyists for Hollywood, no sirree Bob.
And can you believe it? Derek Jeter, playing Derek Jeter, fits the final piece of the puzzle into place – by telling our heroes that there’s a much bigger fish out there who took billions in TARP funds, won’t give documentation on how he spent the money, and – wait for it – has Blackwater mercenaries protecting his sorry a$$ day in and day out.
I wonder who handles Derek Jeter’s investments? Madonna? Does Will Ferrell keep his millions hidden in a fake soup can in his kitchen cabinet? But more importantly, our eeevil banker has even more eeevil Blackwater security contractors – I mean, mercenaries – protecting his sorry ass. You may not know this, but Blackwater used to have “long ties to the White House and prominent Republicans.” Speaking of Republicans, guess who the Big Villain, Carl Bastion, hangs out with? Get ready for the sucker punch moment:
Dick Cheney.
Yes, Dick Cheney. Detective Gamble then asks his partner to teach him to shoot and fight better. Bwahahaha! Isn’t that funny? Dick Cheney! So not only is Bastion eeevil and has eeevil friends, but eeevil friends who have had hunting “accidents.” Bwahahahaha!
The fact that Cheney is now out of political life and both the White House and Congress are controlled by radical leftist Democrats is irrelevant. Hollywoodists and their liberal pals hate anyone and anything connected to George W. Bush now and forever, and so they must continue to be vilified whenever possible. Besides, why would Hollywoodists risk being the “racists” they call conservatives for daring to mock Obama and his policies? Leave the liberal plantation? Never.
And forget about the fact that films like this get made with lots of money…money that’s not stored under the mattress by the ideologically pure, but invested in and loaned by…BANKS. Heck, bankers are probably a producer’s best friend. But I digress…
I understand that crooked financiers are a real problem, but they seem an odd choice for bad guy status in what’s supposed to be a comedy. Speaking of dirty money, I wonder when the sequel about crooked Chicago politicians with ties to the mob is coming out. What? That might make the wrong people mad? I see.
Keep in mind that the film is not yet finished. Movie scripts often go through numerous rewrites both before and during production, so the finished product may be somewhat different than the script Big Hollywood received. However, I find it hard to believe that they’d change something as major as – well, how the movie ends. But you never know.
“The Other Guys,” coming soon to a theater near you. Based on what I’ve seen, don’t rush out to see it.
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