The Other Guys, Mark Wahlberg, Will Ferrell

My Favorite Scene: The Other Guys (2010) “Lions vs. Tuna”

Dissecting what makes people laugh pretty much ruins any humor you’re trying to examine.  It’s like trying to pin mercury down.  Something makes you laugh or it doesn’t.  While it’s easy to agree on great dramatic films, finding consensus on comedies is so much harder.  It’s very similar, in a way, to what scares you: it does or it doesn’t.  That being said, the state of comedies in Hollywood is about at its lowest ebb in recent memory.  If there’s one good comedy a year now that seems to be a triumph.  Comedies are infinitely harder to write than dramas and operate almost on a pass/fail reaction, rather than the different degrees with which you can like a drama.


I love Will Ferrell.  I know a lot don’t, but I think he’s hysterical and way more talented, a lot of the time, than the material he takes.  He can actually ACT if you’ve forgotten Stranger Than Fiction (and it’s a sin if you did).  His comedies with Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, etc.) have been largely hits in my book and I just rewatched 2010’s The Other Guys with my brother the other night and remembered how much I liked it.

The film, overall, is hysterical for the first half and then spends the second half coasting off the tropes established in the first while McKay tries to make a misguided serious point about corporate bailouts, white collar crime and TARP, but I find it an overall hoot.  Pairing what is essentially Mark Wahlberg’s character from The Departed and making him the hysterical partner to Will Ferrell’s accountant cop makes for a great dynamic.  Nowhere is this better exemplified than in this scene where Wahlberg’s character tries to chew out his partner and is rebutted with one of the greatest absurdist rants in recent memory.


Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, The Other Guys

3 thoughts on “My Favorite Scene: The Other Guys (2010) “Lions vs. Tuna””

  1. My favorite Will Ferrell moment is when he appears at the end of the LEGO Movie. If it had been any other actor, the shadowy father coming down the stairs would have actually been creepy, but because it was Will Ferrell you knew everything was OK, despite the slight sense of menace.

    Stranger Than Fiction is by far his best film. One of the reasons comedies are so bad right now is that Hollywood has forgotten Charlie Chaplin’s belief that tragedy is the best source for comedy. In the most revered Three Stooges short, Disorder in the Court, an innocent woman’s life hangs in the balance. Also, the best comedies from the past are just as well-made as the best dramas. Being There has cinematography and acting that’s up there with The Godfather. Today’s comedies look like they were made by the directors of sitcoms.


    Stranger Than Fiction was brilliant, and of course it was a bomb.

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  2. Sorry, that was kind of tangential even for me. I’m not trying to say that all comedies should be about depressing subjects, just that Hollywood does not take comedies seriously anymore. Comedies work best when there is something real at stake, and when the filmmakers put as much effort into them as they do with “serious” movies. Stranger Than Fiction was a comedy/drama that someone really cared about.


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    1. No, I understand what you mean. Most comedies today seem…lazy. Marc Forster (who also directed Quantum of Solace) did a brilliant job with Stranger Than Fiction. It’s one of the most underrated films of the last decade.

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