Back in April, our own Pam Meister gave everyone a heads up with a scathing Sucker Punch Review of director Adam McKay’s “The Other Guys,” which stars Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg and opens nationwide this coming Friday. From the looks of Kyle Smith’s write up today, the actual film is even worse than expected — completely undone by left-wing speechifying. Yep, Hollywood is money driven. Not political at all. You gonna believe Patrick Goldstein or your lying eyes?
Ferrell and his writing partner/director Adam McKay think they have a really important message about capitalism. It’s so important that it interrupts, then takes over, then finally kills their (otherwise often very funny) new movie, “The Other Guys.” The movie is being sold as (like “Hot Fuzz”) a mock-cop epic, and it is. Or it was, at some stage of the process. But Ferrell and McKay introduce an investment banker (Steve Coogan) who represents Evil Capitalism and is even shown shaking hands with George W. Bush (whom Ferrell has said he would refuse to meet with, on principle).
The Coogan character not only isn’t funny, but he becomes a bulletin board for Ferrell and McKay to post all of their bitter, half-understood notions about What’s Wrong With Wall Street. Like many idiots in the popular press, they are convinced that the Bernie Madoff scandal is somehow indicative of the way modern Wall Street crony capitalism works (when in fact it was a simple Ponzi scheme that could have happened anytime and has been happening for a century — but is relatively rare simply because of the inevitability of getting caught). The more the movie yammers on about pension schemes and misappropriated funds, the more you check your watch.
Read the full piece here and be sure to bookmark Smith’s site.