This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr hits the road with Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis to see if the new Todd Phillips comedy will be as funny as The Hangover. He also faces off with Will Ferrell and Brad Pitt in a very mega way. It’s the first official weekend of the holiday movie season, so Kevin will hand out the mid-term grades and let you know if these films are worth checking out.

There are few things better in this life than realizing something ridiculous is real. It’s like the first time you found out chocolate chip pancakes weren’t some elaborate ruse invented by your parents to get you to the oatmeal-filled breakfast table. Come on. Seriously? It’s pancakes with chocolate in them? The cinematic chocolate chips in this case are falling where they may, and that happens to be in the big warm pancake of Will Ferrell’s Spanish-language comedy Casa de Mi Padre. Not only is the project real, it’s also got a hell of a cast lined up. Both Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna are phenomenal talents – the kind of talents that would be challenged by something like this to great result. Bernal will play a friend of the Ferrell/Luna family with Luna filling in for John C. Reilly this go round as Ferrell’s brother. Before you ask, yes, theoretically they could end up naked in bed together again. Although it’s great that Ferrell has gotten some great help for the film, it won’t matter if he keeps thinking everything in the language means “Whale Vagina.” [Collider]

It was the strangest news of last week. Will Ferrell was announcing his involvement in a Spanish language comedy that would be subtitled in English. The film, Casa de Mi Padre, had nothing but a name. No director. No plot announced. No gaffer hired yet. Now, at least the veil of secrecy on the director’s seat has lifted. It’s going to be SNL writer and Funny or Die Presents…director Matt Piedmont taking the helm for his first feature film. For some reason, they probably didn’t have enough money (or beers) to hire Pearl to direct. It may be a first for Piedmont, but he’s already directed a dozen Funny or Die Presents…and he was a writer on SNL for nearly 120 episodes. His feature chops have yet to be seen, but he’s definitely no slouch. Plus, it’ll be nice to have some fresh eyes take on Will Ferrell – especially if it’s going to be in a foreign language. And I just figured it out. This is all a ruse to nab that coveted spot as the United States’ entry into the Best Foreign Film category isn’t it? [Production Weekly]

No doubt you’ve read about it if you haven’t seen it. The Other Guys, the latest collaboration between masters of the sophomoric Adam McKay and Will Ferrell, concludes with an animated chart-and-graph sequence over its end credits detailing the inner workings of Ponzi schemes, the exponential disparity between the wages of corporate CEOs and their average worker, and the rather comical eventual release date of currently imprisoned white-collar criminal Bernie Madoff. It seems startling at first, for one of the most hilariously dumb comedies of the summer (I certainly don’t mean this as an insult, as true silliness is hard to come by and McKay/Ferrell routinely pull it off masterfully) to conclude with something of a visual lecture. It’s confounding for a film that asks the bare minimum of its viewer to conclude with what seems to be a message built from populist outrage, a message for which there seemed, on the surface, little if any buildup toward. The best course of action – for most critics, anyway – has been to read and enjoy The Other Guys wholly separate from its end credits (films, after all, are often misread as ending before their credits; we’re conditioned not to any pay attention to them). I find this reading of The Other Guys too selective, and its end credits – as didactic and ill-placed as they may seem at first to be – paint a rather different film in hindsight to the one we think we have been seeing.

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, Peter Hall and John Gholson stop by to drop the Cinematical tag team on me, and we discuss the finer points of Pedobear advertising. They also destroy my anticipation for two films, and we manage to discuss the worst buddy cop cliches while admitting to the ones we can’t get enough of. All of this, plus you learn what movie is like Inception meets Dora the Explorer.

It would be easy to say The Other Guys is the funniest ‘buddy cop’ movie of the past several years. Or that it’s the most consistently entertaining action/comedy since Hot Fuzz. Or that it’s easily the best Will Ferrell movie since Anchorman. Or that even if Kevin Smith’s Cop Out was remade as a comedy the result still wouldn’t be anywhere near as as hilarious as The Other Guys. All of that’s true, but you won’t catch me saying it here because the hyperbole (and cheap digs at Smith) can’t hide the fact that the movie also has a glaring problem with plot and an overly long running time. But then again, those problems can’t hide the fact that The Other Guys will have you smiling and laughing aloud from beginning to end either. Detectives Danson and Highsmith are heroes in blue. They catch every criminal, they break every rule, and both their co-workers and the public view them as NYPD super-cops. Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are not Detectives Danson and Highsmith.

Few details are known, but according to Google Translator, this is the what the headline should say in Spanish in order to announce that Will Ferrell will be starring in a Spanish language film with English subtitles. The comedy is titled Casa de Mi Padre, which I think we all had enough high school level Spanish to translate. Unfortunately, there are no plot details, and no casting details beyond Ferrell’s involvement as star and producer through the his Gary Sanchez Production label.

After spilling into Hall H, the first panel of Comic-Con 2010 saw director Todd McGrath presenting a short featurette for Megamind that completely spoiled the opening of the movie. It was spoiled, but it’s an interesting concept, one that takes a bit of courage to go all the way with, and it finally made the film stand out amongst the rabel of other 3D, animated family films. The rest of the panel was an improv practice class with Will Ferrell, Tina Fey and Jonah Hill passing the comedy baton around, trying to pour as much dry wit on every answer they gave. Of course, this was juxtaposed by Ferrell wearing a home-made Megamind costume that looked more like he was dressing up as Tobias Funke on his way to a Blue Man Group audition.

It’s clear from this first full trailer for Dreamworks’ upcoming animated superhero film Megamind that the similarities to Pixar’s The Incredibles are on purpose. That said, it isn’t exactly a bad thing.

Remember how you really wanted to see Ron Burgundy and his wacky team of adventuring newsmen and newswoman again? I’ve got some bad news for you.

Without knowing anything else about The Other Guys other than seeing this trailer, you might very well think that it’s going to be just another dumb comedy. But there’s a reason why you should be optimistic about it…

Dreamworks Animation has released the first teaser trailer for their upcoming film Megamind, which will release on November 5, 2010. The film — like so many Dreamworks releases — sports a pretty big name voice cast. Will Ferrell will voice the title character, an evil mastermind bent on world destruction.

As a part of FSR’s Decade in Review I’ve been tasked with coming up a list of the most memorable, landmark performances since 2000.

Damn. Well, maybe now Tom Hanks and Corey Feldman will take the hint and make The Burbs II, so we can finally all sleep easier.

Sony is the home and King of Kong director Seth Gordon is set to helm. Will we finally get to see King Dork?

Well, we have quite a number of stories to report this weekend and I guess the biggest one is the surprisingly strong showing of The Hangover, which exceeded expectations and just about toppled Up from first place this weekend.

Kevin Carr reviews this week’s new movies: Land of the Lost and The Hangover.

We find our way back from the Land of the Lost with a list of 10 things we weren’t keen on and half as many that we thought were groovy.

Will Ferrell is currently in talks to take the lead in a new David Dobkin directed comedy called Neighborhood Watch, which sounds a lot like a remake of the great Tom Hanks comedy The ‘burbs if you ask me.

According to Dead Snow director Tommy Wirkola, Hansel and Gretel escaped being eaten by a witch, grew bitter about it, and grew up to hunt black hats down with shotguns.