THE OTHER GUYSB+

Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Michael Keaton, Steve Coogan, Samuel L. Jackson, Dwayne JohnsonDirector: Adam McKayTheaters: Carmike, Cinemark, Chapel Hills, Hollywood, TinseltownRated: PG-13 (for crude and sexual content, language, violence and some drug material)Running Time: 1 hour, 47 minutes

“The Other Guys” is the second buddy police comedy to come out this year. But unlike the highly anticipated, but roundly dismissed, Kevin Smith outing, “Cop Out,” “The Other Guys” is actually, well, funny.

Will Ferrell plays Det. Allen Gamble, an emasculated, Prius-owning, milquetoast forensic accountant with a compulsion to dot every I and cross every T.

His reluctant partner is Det. Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg), a hotheaded loose cannon desperate for his moment to shine. New York’s Finest they are not.

While Gamble seems perfectly content to push papers all day long, Hoitz, who has been grounded with a desk job after an incident with an itchy trigger finger, is crawling out of his skin to get back into the action. Hoitz finally gets his wish when Gamble uncovers an embezzlement scheme of Bernie Madoff proportions.

Here, at last, is a way out of the office and into the history books — if only he can convince Gamble to leave the safe cocoon of the station house. Luckily, Hoitz is not above a little, um, coercion.

“The Other Guys” represents the fourth collaboration between Farrell and writer/director Adam McKay, following “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” and “Step Brothers.” “The Other Guys” is far and away the funniest and smartest of the three, a satire of 1980s buddy-cop movies such as “Lethal Weapon,” complete with saxophone solos and slo-mo action sequences (comedy director McKay clearly had a ball directing epic gun battles, violent car chases and numerous things going boom). The film even manages to take a few timely shots at our current financial crisis.

“The Other Guys’” sense of humor is actually quite distinctive. McKay and Chris Henchy’s script is almost utterly bereft of irony. It is comedy at its most sincere — without guile, without double entendre, without sarcasm. What you see is what you get. And because it is a style so rarely employed, it makes the film even funnier than it otherwise would or should be, giving it a tonality uniquely its own.

Ferrell’s Gamble isn’t necessarily an entirely new creation. We’ve seen variations of this character before. What makes him and the film work so well is the introduction of Wahlberg, a dramatic actor with a famous intensity who has clearly been hiding a vibrant comedic talent. Even as the (mostly) straight man, Wahlberg shines.

The film’s funniest scene involves a sequence in which Wahlberg is introduced to Ferrell’s “plain ball and chain” wife who turns out to be the decidedly-anything-but-plain Eva Mendes. Wahlberg’s shell-shocked incredulity is our own. (Mendes isn’t the only supporting standout, joining Steve Coogan, Samuel L. Jackson, Dwayne Johnson and sight-for-sore-eyes Michael Keaton as the guys’ station chief).

“The Other Guys” is not perfect. The film doesn’t exploit the differences of its lead characters long enough, and though the pace is laugh-a-minute in the first half, the film cannot sustain its momentum and eventually begins to recycle its material rather than invent fresh jokes.

This inertia makes it all too clear that a tighter edit would have kept the film from running a bit too long and going a bit flat in the end. But in the snooze-fest of a summer that is 2010, this is certainly one of the funnier, more enjoyable films.

BRANDON FIBBS Photo by