The Other Guys

I’m going to be honest, I didn’t think I was going to like The Other Guys. As much as I love Will Ferrell, the previews made it look stupid, and not in a good way. I was pleasantly surprised last week, then, when my family saw The Other Guys and realized it was quite funny.

The premise: Partners Allen Gamble (Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) are detectives with the NYPD who, rather than going out and getting bad guys, are stuck in the office doing paperwork. Gamble loves this lifestyle; Hoitz hates it. He also hates Gamble. But after the deaths of the department’s star crime-fighters (the perfectly-cast Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson), Hoitz sees an opening and manages to get Gamble to join him in investigating a jewelry heist. Of course, everything is not what it seems, and the two become wrapped up in a corporate fraud case.

Ferrell, as to be expected, is a delight – practically everything out of the man’s mouth makes me laugh. And Wahlberg stood his own, not only as a straight-man, but also making jokes of his own.

One of the things I appreciated most about The Other Guys was that its jokes were not directed to a particular demographic: there were broad laugh-lines, silliness, and smart jokes. The lines that made my family laugh were different than the ones that made the people behind us laugh, but we all found the movie funny.

Though The Other Guys is clearly meant to be a comedy about action movies, rather than an action movie itself, it doesn’t let that stop it from having plenty of car chases, fights, and explosions. The movie lost me a bit in those sections – I would choose comedy over action in a heartbeat – but I can see why others would enjoy it.

Though I would never describe The Other Guys as a political movie, it does comment on the irresponsibility of Wall Street. Within the movie are a few digs at the SEC, and over the closing credits, graphics illustrate statistics of the misuse of bailout money and the disparity between CEOs and other workers. I never would have guessed that The Other Guys would remind me so much of some of the economy-centered books that I’ve read this year.

In the end, I’m giving The Other Guys a 3/5 (though it’s on the higher end of the “3-scale”). It’s worth seeing once, but not more than that.

Watch Jon Stewart’s interview with Will Ferrell

No One Would Listen (Day of Reviews, Post 2)

Harry Markopolos, the man who warned the SEC that Bernard Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme almost a decade before Madoff turned himself in, has written a book about the process entitled No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller.

In No One Would Listen, Markopolos shares a truly unbelievable situation. This guy figured out that Madoff was stealing billions from investors, but despite his many efforts, he could not get the SEC to investigate the case. Even after reading the book, I still don’t understand how the SEC managed to ignore the case. Markopolos did all the work, and they still didn’t do anything.

Markopolos’s personality is not at all removed from his book. He is blunt, angry, and bitter. Boy is he bitter. Though his points are justified, I got tired of the “SEC sucks” talk, even though I completely agree that they do suck. Markopolos ends up coming off as a bit of a jackass. In the epilogue, though, he shares his 16-point plan for fixing the SEC, and seems a much more reasonable guy. Most of his points make sense, and I do hope the government implements them.

It was a struggle for me to get through No One Would Listen, and though I can’t quite pinpoint why, I think it may have been a combination of it being yet another book about economics and it being the first Daily Shill book I read after my vacation. But despite my challenges, I wouldn’t warn you away from reading it. I wouldn’t recommend it either, though. It gets a 3/5.

Watch Jon Stewart’s interview with Harry Markopolos

Buy the book