Les renforts

Les gags fusent et font mouche dans cette comédie policière pourtant faible sur le plan de l'intrigue et des enjeux.

The opening sequence may well be the best chunkof cinematic satire since Dr. Strangelove, but Adam McKay's send-up of buddy cop movies finally eats too many doughnuts and grows soft in the middle - just when it needed to flex.

Maybe the most fascinating thing about The Other Guys is the closing credits sequence, a sharp and utterly un-ironic takedown of Wall Street and the financial industry told in concise and clever graphics. It's totally out of place given the sloppy silliness that came before it, and emphasizes the Ponzi scheme plot that was largely incoherent in the movie, but the credits may actually be able to work up some populist rage among people who paid to see Mark Wahlberg throw coffee on Will Ferrell.

Once again, and for the first time in a while, Mr. Ferrell uses his big body, his quick mind and his infinitely fungible voice to yoke disparate and ridiculous traits into a brand new and yet instantly archetypal comic character.

Watching Hoitz and Gamble butt heads, there's little doubt a perfectly entertaining movie could be made without leaving the office, but these characters are clearly not alone in their craving for some action. In a field dominated by Michael Bay types, McKay qualifies as one of "the other guys," a director more given to orchestrating punchlines than pyrotechnics.

Sans être révolutionnaire, ce tandem de flic se veut plutôt efficace. Il est bien appuyé par les performances joyeusement caricaturales de Samuel L. Jackson et de Dwayne Johnson, par le tempérament décontracté de Michael Keaton en supérieur, et par la présence allumée d'Evan Mendes en épouse d'un des deux protagonistes.

Quant aux deux têtes d'affiche, disons que leur contraste, tant dans le physique que dans l'énergie, fait vraiment mouche. Will Ferrell improvise - on le devine - comme le pro qu'il est; et face à lui, Mark Wahlberg en straight man est parfaitement crédible, autant dans le comique que dans l'action - territoire qui lui est plus habituel.

They're mismatched and inept. If only they were consistently funny. The Other Guys is like a padded Saturday Night Live sketch. What would have been very funny for 15 minutes, and pretty funny for 45, doesn't maintain the standard over the course of a feature-length film.