The Other Guys

Adam McKay’s film was sold as a buddy cop comedy, but he has said the aim was something else: he was trying to make the whole picture an allegory for the financial crisis, and when it came out nobody cared. The case opens on a scaffolding permit violation and ends at money embezzled from the New York police pension fund. The closing credits then drop the jokes for animated infographics setting the bailout money that went to firms and executives against what a police officer is paid. Joke and thesis are the same object: the film hits hardest where it speaks plainly. The pair’s squad car is a hybrid, and that is the gag. Production prepared three separate Priuses for the street work, one with a racing engine in the back seat. Set pieces such as the helicopter crash were staged practically by KernerFX, not digitally. The man shot by mistake in the opening is Derek Jeter playing himself. Michael Keaton’s captain moonlights at Bed Bath & Beyond and keeps quoting TLC lyrics without knowing it. A good fit if you will take an investigation running on accountancy instead of car chases as comic material. Not for you if you assume the fraud is a pretext, because the plot really does route through it and the middle slows accordingly.