For a while The Other Guys is redemption enough for pals and collaborators Adam McKay and Will Ferrell. Though the question sticks with me, did they need another chance to prove themselves? Last August the two produced one hell of an awful movie with The Goods: Live Hard Sell Hard, something so terrible the only grace in their advertising campaign was Roger Ebert’s three-star rating. Anyway, whatever movie the two would make next was forgiving nature enough to forget The Goods, like I’m sure most of us already have.

But that’s not what makes The Other Guys so funny. It could be the comedy is shameless; not categorized beneath “guilty pleasure,” because we know the movie’s crap you won’t admit to being as such. It’s not something you need to take as it is because it’s all you have to see, since I think at the movies, what with both Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and The Expendables dropping next week and Dinner for Schmuks being released the last, you have options. The Other Guys gets that, and McKay and Henchy treat it not as collateral but as something they truly feel passionate about. Something where hard work is shown, whether it’s when Mark Wahlberg is dumping a cup of coffee onto Ferrell or the two are drinking party liquor to the Black Eyed Pea’s “I’ma Be.” It’s tough not to compare this movie to others past, others that got very much wrong, and to concentrate on what The Other Guys got so very right.

Ferrell stars as Allen Gamble, Wahlberg as Terry Hoitz. They’re stuck in the shadows of two “superhero” cops (played with a grin by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson). Gamble unknowingly stumbles upon a probable case of embezzlement regarding state lottery tickets and a Bernie Madoff-eqsue criminal (Steve Coogan), and Hoitz drags him in with hopes of redeeming his name. I can’t let you in on his screw-up playing latch-key kid, but it’s a good ‘un. The Other Guys is brimming with potential, maybe even more than it’s fulfilled here, but you rarely ever tell. Perhaps Coogan’s character and crisis were supposed to be references to our current financial struggle, but it’s no big deal if it doesn’t come off that way. McKay and Henchy hit every right note, raining plot point after plot point with strung-along gags and improvisation done with extreme talent by Ferrell and Wahlberg. It’s in McKay’s movies where every character feels relaxed, no stress over filling out history or ambition.

It’s crowd-pleasing (couldn’t tell you the amount of laughs the audience I sat with found around every corner) and a quick-witted romp that never slows down. At the heart of things The Other Guys is something that wasn’t lost in translation that could be read as compliment or insult, and maybe I’m leaning very close to the former. Ferrell’s Allen Gamble is a complete mess, even if that’s what he’s supposed to come across as. I don’t think the jokes will age as well as in McKay’s previous hits Anchorman or Talladega Nights. Though I’m willing to look past that and take stride in the clear-cut comedy to come from The Other Guys. Sure it’s conventional, but it’s the lines between that are filled out so very well. By the end its message of who the “real” heroes are is tired, but our fateful narrator (Jackson) doesn’t fret more than a line over it. Ferrell and Wahlberg’s banter was enough for me to admit The Other Guys’s emergence as one of the funniest movies of the summer, just when we need it most.

There’s no way around saying The Other Guys is the movie Cop Out (remember earlier this year, that Kevin Smith disaster?) was trying to be. It succeeds in not being much homage toward anything, nor a spoof of the like. Perhaps these childish and extremely funny jokes would have worked in say, Date Movie or Scary Movie if those flicks at least tried to be their own thing. But that’s one that would be read as an insult, and The Other Guys doesn’t deserve that. Every quip is another reminder of the buddy-cop movie you won’t be referring to as you leave the theater. Ain’t that a good feeling.

SEE IT.