"The Other Guys," the fourth big-screen collaboration between director Adam McKay and star Will Ferrell, works remarkably well as both a buddy-cop action-flick parody and as a lightly pointed, gently brandished poke at the culture of greed ruining our 401(k)s. It's also one of the better McKay-Ferrell collaborations -- in the top 50 percent, alongside "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" and decidedly better than "Anchorman" and "Step Brothers".

The movie also pokes a few holes in our cultural understanding of truth and justice: We have armies of cops chasing down stick-up men who use a gun on the street to grab a few dollars, but very little oversight for the stick-up men who use a computer on Wall Street to grab a few million. Stick around for the closing credits of "The Other Guys," not only for a nice closing blooper, but, more interestingly, infographics depicting, for one example, the current ratio of CEO pay to worker pay -- while Eva Mendes and Cee-Lo Green duet on a number reprised from the film, "Pimps Don't Cry." Highbrow, lowbrow and no-brow, inspired by improvisation yet connected to the structure of a plot and the traditions of a genre, "The Other Guys" is that rare modern comedy as smart as it is crazy, and as skillful as it is silly.

All in all 3.5 / 5 stars.