"If you thought Abu Ghraib was a laugh riot..." The review from The New York Times:
April 10, 2009 Mall Crisis? Call Security. Then Again, Maybe Not. By MANOHLA DARGIS
If you thought Abu Ghraib was a laugh riot then you might love “Observe and Report,” a potentially brilliant conceptual comedy that fizzles because its writer and director, Jody Hill, doesn’t have the guts to go with his spleen. The story, in short, turns on a psycho shopping mall security chief, Ronnie (Seth Rogen, putting the lump into lumpen proletariat), who rules his retail roost with a Taser, a trigger-hair temper and some smiley-faced sycophants. Like the pettiest of dictators, Ronnie preys on the weak in the service of power (in this case the mall itself). He’s the Lynndie England of this dumber-and-dumbest yukfest.
That’s admittedly overstated, but sadism is this movie’s currency. The standard line about Mr. Hill, whose other credits include the movie “The Foot Fist Way” and the new HBO series “East Bound and Down,” is that he has carved out a place in the pop-cultural firmament by exploiting his characters’ perceived awkwardness. But while Ronnie is socially clumsy, his ineptitude is a contrivance, a mask that initially entertains (we laugh at him), only to be more or less discarded when he turns hero — at which point, we’re meant to laugh less at him and more at everyone else. The comedies of the Farrelly brothers and Judd Apatow hinge on a similar misfit-turned-hero dynamic, but Mr. Hill adds a nasty twist to the formula.
The twist here is Ronnie, a veritable catalog of dysfunction whose drop-dead drunk of a mother (Celia Weston) describes him as having been a special-needs child. Ronnie pops prescription pills day and night, presumably for his self-confessed bipolar disorder. At work, where he is soon preoccupied with capturing a serial flasher (Randy Gambill), he swaggers around the mall like a Wild West sheriff — though because he’s more Deputy Dawg than Dirty Harry, the joke is definitely on him. He bosses around his rent-a-cop underlings, including his deputy, Dennis (a heavily lisping Michael Peña), and John and Matt (John and Matt Yuan), a support team that seems to have been assembled specifically to neutralize any complaints about how Ronnie treats nonwhites.
Not that Ronnie is a race hater. However technically inept a director, Mr. Hill is too professionally shrewd to barrel down that particular road and, more important, there are too many studio dollars at stake here to risk outraging ethnic and racial groups that could be buying movie tickets. Instead Mr. Hill thumbs his nose at politically correct sensibilities, notably through Ronnie’s mutually hostile encounters with a mall worker he calls Saddamn (Aziz Ansari), who has taken a restraining order out against him. Mr. Hill defuses this potentially explosive relationship by making sure that Saddamn is as verbally hostile as his foe, which I guess is supposed to make it O.K. to laugh when Ronnie punches him in the face.
By far the most outrageous instance of Mr. Hill’s disarming his own bombs occurs when Ronnie beds Brandi (Anna Faris, rising above the muck), a cosmetics clerk who’s impervious to his attentions until the flasher brings them together. During an ensuing date, Brandi gobbles pills, guzzles tequila and even sputters puke, prompting Ronnie to kiss her square on the messy mouth. What follows next should have been the shock of the movie: a cut to Ronnie having vigorous sex with Brandi who, from her closed eyes, slack body and the vomit trailing from her mouth to her pillow, appears to have passed out. But before the words “date rape” can form in your head, she rouses herself long enough to command Ronnie to keep going.
Comedy is often cruel, of course, but before 1968, the year the movie rating system was instituted, directors couldn’t squeeze laughs from the suggestion of date rape, as Mr. Hill tries to do here. Like action and horror filmmakers, comedy directors now push hard against social norms with characters who deploy expletives, bodily fluids and increasing brutality. Mr. Hill has upped the ante in this extreme comedy scene not only by creating a working-class, bipolar bully who lives with his alcoholic mother, but also by asking us to laugh at this pathetic soul — and his miserably constrained life — as well as at the violence he wreaks. The dolts in “Dumb and Dumber” had hearts of gold. Ronnie has a gun.
Mr. Hill says his movie was inspired by “Taxi Driver,” a self-flattering comparison. Like those of Travis Bickle, Ronnie’s delusions of grandeur do end in a paroxysm of blood. Yet while Martin Scorsese might be overly fond of screen violence, part of what makes that film profound and memorable is how the thrill of violence, its seduction, is always in play with a palpable moral revulsion. No such dialectic informs “Observe and Report,” which exploits Ronnie and his brutality for laughs. This lack of critique might make the movie seem daring. But it’s hard to see what is so bold about a film that, much like the world outside the theater, turns the pain and humiliation of other people into a consumable spectacle.
You could argue, I suppose, that there is no real difference between Ronnie shooting an unarmed man and a comic who throws a custard pie in another person’s kisser: they both make (some) audiences laugh. To insist on that difference is, among other things, to introduce politics and morality into the conversation, and, really, who wants that when you’re watching a Seth Rogen flick? It’s far better and certainly easier, as the old movie theater slogan put it, to sit back and relax and enjoy the show. That, after all, is precisely what Hollywood banks on each time it manufactures a new entertainment for a public that — as the stupid, violent characters who hold up a mirror to that public indicate — it views with contempt.
"Just what exactly is the point?" asks The Los Angeles Times:
Seth Rogen is in an unlikable place as he walks on the dark side in this blackly comic film filled with mall cop ineptitude. By BETSY SHARKEY Film Critic April 10, 2009
Seth Rogen usually seems like a teddy bear -- a gangling softy with the slow-rolling walk of a big guy and a wide goofy grin, his rumbling "hey, hey, hey" of a laugh littering the bars, backrooms and bedrooms of "Knocked Up," "Superbad" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" just to name a few. If that's the Seth you are looking for in "Observe and Report," here's a news flash: Rogen doesn't live here anymore.
This black-as-a-starless-night comedy about an off-his-meds bipolar, delusions-of-grandeur mall cop (no sweet, bumbling Kevin James anywhere in sight) with a hot "case" on his hands is like the film version of a stun gun -- so, like the Boy Scouts say (and by the way, there's no way most of them will be allowed into this hard-R movie): Be prepared.
"Observe and Report" is filled with enough F-bombs to take out the entire midsection of the country; it has its own special brand of unrestrained head-bashing, stomach-kicking, nightstick-beating brutality that echoes rogue guerrillas anywhere. And there is a long, long, long (did I say long?) full-frontal run by a middle-aged, pot-bellied flasher clad only in a flapping trench coat and a very sturdy pair of sneakers (now where is 3-D when you really need it?).
Sex? Not really. There are a couple of boom-boom scenes with an energetic Anna Faris as Brandi, the sexy cosmetics counter clerk, but they're not designed to satisfy anyone on-screen or off (if you're wondering, "Then what's the point?" hold that thought).
And Rogen? This is the film in which he goes dark, really dark. As chief of security at a local mall, he swaggers through this domain like a very troubled teenager with power, rage issues and a Taser that he's not afraid to use. Just how unhinged does Rogen's Ronnie Barnhardt seem? Super scary Ray Liotta, who does a crazed bad guy as good as anyone, is the local cop assigned to deal with the mall flasher case -- and he's the sane one.
The central agent provocateur of "Observe and Report" is writer-director Jody Hill, who made a splash at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 with his violent strip mall chop-socky " The Foot Fist Way." Hill is clearly fascinated by the mall culture, using it as a petri dish in which to study the unbalanced mind, stuffing it full of that all too common species -- I use the scientific term here -- losers.
What's interesting about Hill's approach is that his guys do unforgivable things and yet he counts on their loserness (rather than big hearts, decency or humanity) to ultimately win us over and convince us they are unconventional heroes whom we should embrace. At best, by the end of his films, you feel like you might, just might, be OK being in the same room with them. But embrace? I don't think so.
There is an arc to Ronnie's story as his hopes of cracking the case of the flasher -- played by Randy Gambill, Hill's production designer on "Foot Fist Way" -- lead him to dreams of earning a spot in the police academy if that darned old psych test doesn't get in the way. He's also dreaming of winning Brandi's heart though it's really unclear whether she has one. He's got his own special-forces unit and if you think Ronnie sounds weird, just think of what the guys who look up to him are like. Michael Peña, whom we're used to seeing in strong dramatic roles ("World Trade Center," "Shooter"), turns up as Ronnie's No. 2, a lisping acolyte and the closest thing Ronnie has to a best friend.
Ronnie roams the Forest Ridge Mall with the macho birthright of a lion on the Serengeti, albeit one so inept that he hasn't made a kill in weeks. There are clichés to be found at every kiosk including a daily, extended F-bomb face-off with Middle Eastern merchant Saddamn (Aziz Ansari). And the free cup of joe anytime from the food court where a smitten Nell (Collette Wolfe) waits for him to swing by each day. At the end of each of those days, Ronnie goes home to mom, in this case a sweet alcoholic with lots of boozy unconditional love played by veteran character actor Celia Weston. Things come to a head as they always do, and then it's over. Whew.
But now we get back to the underlying question: Just what exactly is the point of all the hitting of hot buttons, pushing the genre envelope, sending the profanity meter off the charts, going postal on the violence?
This is definitely not a parody, so that's out. And if Hill and Rogen are shooting for satire, they don't get there -- that's an art form that requires more sophisticated thinking. You can do raunchy, un-PC but thought-provoking comedy brilliantly (or at least very, very well) as Sacha Baron Cohen proved with "Borat" on the big screen and "Da Ali G Show" on the small.
It turns out that the film's title, "Observe and Report," is the credo of mall cops everywhere -- they can look and take notes but they can't actually do anything. Put another way, they are ultimately impotent and expendable. Which is not a bad way to think of this movie. It heaps piles of bad, crazy stuff at our feet then walks away. There is no moral to this story, and there's not much comedy either.
Can't wait to see this! Anna Faris and Celia Weston look hilarious.
The Variety review was positive, at least.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: puxzkkx,
"Notorious was nice, but it’s not in the color purple range" "Angels and Demons may get nominated for cinematography the imagery was profound" "District Nine will definitely win for best foreign film it made money and everyone loved it" ~ 8movies
Posts: 2714 | Location: nz | Registered: January 12, 2009
****************************** LORELAI: You ruined my joke. RORY: Um, no, the punchline ruined your joke. (from Eight O'Clock at the Oasis) ******************************
Posts: 2450 | Location: Baltimore, MD (but originally from Alabama, southern at heart) | Registered: March 19, 2002
A positive, surprisingly serious review from THE VILLAGE VOICE...
By J. Hoberman Tuesday, April 7th 2009 at 2:49pm
As the title Observe and Report begs for analysis, I herewith declare this Seth Rogen comedy broad but thin and more bleak than uproarious—a humorously downsized homage to foundational '70s classics like Dirty Harry and, especially, Taxi Driver, cited by writer-director Jody Hill as a key influence.
As the year's second send-up of an emotionally unbalanced shopping mall security man, it also takes us two-thirds of the way toward a trend. But where the eponymous loser-turned-winner protagonist of the wildly successful and equally slapdash Paul Blart: Mall Cop (played by Kevin James) was a sweet and lovable hypoglycemic with dreams of joining the New Jersey state troopers and wooing the mall's resident hair-extension specialist, Ronnie Barnhardt is an angry, self-important, crude, racist, bipolar knucklehead, possessed of similar ambitions but played by Rogen with admirable disregard for audience empathy.
Adding to the pathology, Ronnie (analysts will note the gender-ambiguous, infantilizing name) lives at home with his slatternly, sluttish dipso mother (Celia Weston) and haplessly lusts after her youthful counterpart, the hard-partying cosmetics salesgirl Brandi (Anna Faris). Ronnie's problems with sex and aggression are epitomized in an extended volley of alternately loud and sotto voce "**** you"s exchanged with the mall worker he calls Saddam (Aziz Ansari). Longing for a real gun so as to be a real man, this would-be authoritarian tough guy further engages in a destructively competitive relationship with the police detective Harrison (Ray Liotta), who arrives at the mall to investigate a case of male exhibitionism.
Ronnie is obsessed with the flasher (unclothed and credited), as well he might be. This irrepressible exhibitionist exposes himself to Brandi (driving her to orgasmic hysteria) and is repressed Ronnie's secret sharer. The two men have a certain physical similarity, and Observe and Report's most relentless riff is the blatant equation of the flasher's oft-seen and pointedly unprepossessing dick with the castrated mall cop's attempt to possess what a Lacanian would call the phallic function. In the movie's signature image, Ronnie plasters a snapshot of the flasher's member on his forehead and proclaims, "That's me!"
Like its unpleasant protag, Observe and Report isn't so much funny-ha-ha as funny-peculiar. Despite a couple of extended, comic two-handers—Ronnie's date with Brandi, and his psychological evaluation when he applies for admission to the police academy—the movie's most convulsive moments are the lunatic, even terrifying, explosions of invective and violence. Off his meds, this alarmingly bellicose bratwurst confidently informs the professionally smiling psychologist that, "At this point in my life, I feel like I could destroy some mother****ers!"
Indeed. The requisite politically incorrect ethnic vaudeville (which involves Asians, Arabs, and Latinos, but not African-Americans) is a needed cushion for the psychosexual drama. Viewers will be grateful that the singlemindedly simian Rogen, who demonstrates more depth than range, is flanked by two shameless clowns. The hilariously vulgar Faris (last seen in The House Bunny) injects some superbly timed physical comedy, while Michael Peña (better known for serious roles in Lions for Lambs and World Trade Center) contributes a note of nihilistic bromance as Ronnie's lisping sidekick. Rogen's best bits are conceptual—as when Ronnie goes "undercover" (which is to say, completely delusional) and, recognized by his colleagues at the mall, denies his utter existence.
Ronnie ultimately devolves into a parody Travis Bickle whose rescue fantasy, to the degree that it can be articulated, centers on the handicapped, abused "born-again virgin" (Collette Wolf) working the mall's Dunkin' Donuts equivalent. Still, Observe and Report is not without a certain sociological vérité. Ronnie the Mall Cop is as an iconic expression of irate proletarian populism and brainless role-playing as Joe the Plumber or Rush the Limbaugh—identify or ignore at your peril.
Posts: 27161 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY A peripheral character comments in Observe and Report: "I thought this would be funny, but it's actually kind of sad."
The sentiment sums up a good portion of this hit-and-miss comedy starring Seth Rogen as a delusional security guard. Though it's more darkly humorous than the inane, unfunny Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Observe and Report lacks the wit of many of Rogen's previous comedies.
Its biggest asset is the way it sidesteps predictability and focuses its tale on unlikely and unhinged characters. Rogen plays Ronnie, the head of security for the Forest Ridge Mall. Ronnie lacks the efficiency of even a buffoon like Paul Blart. But he makes up for it in bluster.
Though Ronnie is more dysfunctional than endearing, you still root for him. This may say more about Rogen's likability than that of the character he plays.
Some of the funnier conceits involve Ronnie's relationship with his alcoholic mother (Celia Weston) and his overtures to Brandi (Anna Faris), a salesgirl he lusts for. Faris will seemingly go to any lengths for a laugh. As will Rogen, so they're a good match.
Much of the movie centers on the antics of a heavyset flasher who clambers around the mall's parking lot. When he exposes himself to Brandi, Ronnie intervenes, like a knight in tarnished armor. Mostly, he just makes her paranoid. But he does manage to get a boozy date out of it.
The exhibitionist also draws the heavy guns. Ray Liotta plays a smug police detective, and Ronnie's psychological problems worsen in his presence. An altercation between Ronnie and a crack dealer (Danny McBride, Rogen's co-star in Pineapple Express) is comical before it fizzles.
When Observe and Report is funny, it's often shockingly so. The characters can be nasty or self-absorbed, yet they still have a whiff of sweetness. The bipolar Ronnie sometimes seems in dire need of psychiatric care. Other times he's pathetic. The humor wanes when sad moments overtake the absurd.
Writer/director Jody Hill did a better job with The Foot Fist Way, which starred McBride. Both films feature deluded fools with underlying psychological problems. Observe and Report is hampered by opening so soon after Mall Cop, and by their superficial similarities. Both Blart and Ronnie want to be cops. Both have crushes on comely mall clerks.
But where Mall Cop is broad, safe and sticks to a formula, Observe and Report is unabashedly crude, cynical, off-kilter and funnier. Still, you wonder why the world needs two tales, months apart, of twisted and inept security guards.
Posts: 27161 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
The most charitable thing we can say about the otherwise insufferable "Observe and Report" is that it shows Seth Rogen has some range.
He's not just the self-deprecating cutup, the stoner teddy bear we've come to know and love in movies like "Knocked Up," "Superbad" and "Pineapple Express." Apparently, he also has some pent-up rage in him, which he unleashes in spectacularly wild fashion as the head of security at a suburban shopping center.
(Don't call him a mall cop, although the superficial similarities to the PG-rated Paul Blart are unmistakable. Later on, though, as Rogen's character sinks deeply into his self-appointed role as vigilante, he will also resemble Travis Bickle. It's as odd a combination as it sounds.)
Like Blart, Rogen's Ronnie Barnhardt takes his job far too seriously, but he's forced to spring into actual action when a flasher starts antagonizing the shoppers — and, more importantly, blond bimbo Brandi (Anna Faris), the cosmetics clerk for whom he's long lusted. But there's little about Ronnie that makes you root for him to succeed personally or professionally; writer-director Jody Hill has created yet another singularly unlikable character, as he did in his debut last summer, "The Foot Fist Way."
On the one hand, you have to admire Hill for just going for it, for recklessly abandoning all semblance of what would be considered tasteful or appropriate in a comedy for mainstream audiences. Unlike Danny McBride's "Foot Fist" character, delusional tae kwon do instructor Fred Simmons, Ronnie has does have some vulnerability to him, which shows in a few scenes with his alcoholic mother (Celia Weston), but those are played for awkward laughs. More often, the road Hill drags us down isn't a terribly funny one, especially as it becomes more startlingly obvious that Ronnie is a danger to himself and others.
Hill's script is just as erratic: a series of hit-and-miss non sequiturs in which his characters mostly humiliate and injure themselves and others. It's not terribly offensive (though women may be put off by the way Ronnie's date with Brandi ends); it's more like an onslaught, one that seems to drag on.
A sequence in which Ronnie and fellow security guard Dennis (a lisping Michael Pena) get high and cause mayhem in the mall after hours is a prime example: It comes out of nowhere, does nothing to further the plot and disappears just as quickly.
Ray Liotta, as the police detective assigned to investigate the crimes, is one-note in his disdain of Ronnie's ineptitude. Similarly, Faris' comic charms go to waste: She's back in that ditz persona she's perfected, but there's no sweetness within the character, just bland self-adsorption.
Hill's longtime friend McBride makes a brief appearance here, too, in one of the movie's many out-of-place moments. Come to think of it, "Observe and Report" is like a mall itself in many ways: it has a bunch of random stuff under one roof, and you can only hang out in it for so long without growing depressed about the future of humanity.
"Observe and Report," a Warner Bros. Pictures release, is rated R for pervasive language, graphic nudity, drug use, sexual content and violence. Running time: 86 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: pacinofan,
Posts: 27161 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
A positive review from David Edelstein in NEW YORK MAGAZINE...
Behind the soullessly objective title Observe and Report comes a mighty volcano of psychosexual mayhem—a landmark crazy (as in pathological) comedy. It’s set in a mall and centers on a cop, but it is to Paul Blart: Mall Cop as Taxi Driver is to Taxi. The writer-director, Jody Hill, goes straight for the action-comedy genre’s underbelly, which turns out to be dark, violent, and jiggly. He opens with an overweight man rushing up to women in the parking lot, spreading his raincoat, and gleefully waggling the family jewels. A short time later, another overweight man, head of mall security Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen), proclaims, “Part of me thinks this disgusting pervert is the best thing that ever happened to me.” He’s right—insanely right. The fat creep has not only given Ronnie’s life a focus—he’s virtually Ronnie’s doppelgänger. On the hunt, the blowhard gun nut Ronnie now has license to wave his own rod in people’s faces—particularly the face of Brandi (Anna Faris), the lissome blonde cosmetics clerk whose counter he haunts.
Ronnie makes for an aggressively unattractive hero—and some of us were already thinking, Haven’t we seen enough of Seth Rogen for one lifetime? Yet director Hill piles on the unpleasantries as if determined to test our impulse to identify with the man carrying the gun (or, here, Taser). Ronnie lords it over the guys (racial minorities) in his security detail. He harasses a Muslim lotion vendor. He takes advantage of Brandi’s terror of the flasher to press her for a date—and give her a little squeeze. He relentlessly interferes with the ultra-professional detective (Ray Liotta) on the case. It’s true that in comedies like Anchorman and Step Brothers, Will Ferrell wins us over as fatuously self-centered child-men, but Ferrell is ineradicably sweet. Rogen’s Ronnie is on a different plane of ickiness. Coming face-to-face with him in life, we might actually fear for our safety.
But Hill isn’t simply raising the bar on grossness. His purview is wider. Macho mini-despots—and their origins—interest him. His first film, The Foot Fist Way (2006), focused on a similar character, Fred (Danny McBride), a martial-arts instructor given to bullying people who made him feel small (among them little kids). Only after this peewee fascist was thoroughly humiliated—by much bigger fascists—and had to overcome the urge to curl up in the fetal position for the rest of his pathetic life did we finally care about him: He was a dick, but he was suddenly our dick. The Foot Fist Way was monotonous—it got stuck in a derisive-mockumentary groove. But somehow, without our quite realizing it, Hill made us see Fred not as a monster but a casualty of his culture. If you pricked him (or kicked him in the head), he would bleed.
Observe and Report’s Ronnie is a casualty, too—of a broken family (his father is long gone, his mother a prodigiously sloppy drunk), some bad genes (he’s on strong psychoactive meds), a gun culture, sexual frustration exacerbated by stacked blondes in short dresses, and the accumulating spiritual effects of working in a mall and eating fast food. As Travis Bickle was a sponge for urban bad vibes, Ronnie is modern suburban mall culture gone freakazoid. Hill hits what seems like a bad-taste peak early on (Ronnie grinding away on top of an ostensibly unconscious alcohol-and-drug-addled, vomit-flecked Brandi) and just keeps climbing. When Ronnie and his second-in-command, Dennis (Michael Peña), embark on an orgy of drug-taking and authoritarian violence against unarmed civilians, the air in the theater feels dangerously thin. Is this a comedy again?
Most certainly—thanks to, among other things, an ensemble of comic geniuses. Ray Liotta uses the tension between his ravaged, teenage-delinquent complexion and girlishly soft eyes—all at once they twinkle with sadism—to make you laugh before he opens his mouth. Anna Faris expels her Valley Girl lines as if hysterically entranced by her own blondeness; her hyperventilations are exquisite. Celia Weston plays Ronnie’s mother’s alcoholism not to the hilt but the hilt above the hilt. I won’t spoil the joke in Peña’s lisping, baby-sweet security guard, but I’ll say it’s in the tail—and it stings. And damn if Rogen isn’t wonderful, too. He never sugars Ronnie’s dementia. As the blind fool skulks around the mall, egregious in his “undercover” attire (“I live by a code of my own invention,” he narrates. “In these dark times, the world has no use for another scared man”), you see that he believes in his own omniscience. Observe and Report is the rare “action-comedy” (almost always a muddled hybrid) that earns its cathartic climax. The blood is real because the psychosis is real. But somehow—the magic of comedy—it’s also uproarious.
Posts: 27161 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Think "Travis Bickle: Mall Cop" and you'll have some idea of what to expect from "Observe and Report," writer-director Jody Hill's shockingly and sometimes discomfortingly funny comedy about an unstable security guard who views himself as vigilant protector - and, occasionally, avenging angel - while patrolling a suburban shopping mall. Taking a setup that could have been played for sitcom jokiness and family-friendly slapstick, Hill attempts something much darker, if not downright transgressive, with a pic bound to divide auds and critics into love-it-or-leave-it camps when it opens April 10. It's a gamble that might pay off handsomely for Warners. Or not.
With his hair cropped short, his waistline expanded and his overall vibe suggesting less lovable schlub than fascistic thug, Seth Rogen makes no effort to claim aud sympathy with a nervy lead performance that's in perfect sync with the pic itself. Rogen keeps the aud off-balance in ways that aren't always pleasurable, often indicating that, at any moment, funny business might devolve into serious mayhem - which, on at least three occasions, it does.
Rogen plays Ronnie Barnhardt, security chief at Forest Ridge Mall, a terse, tough-talking fellow who still lives at home with his alcoholic mom (Celia Weston), nurses a crush on a bosomy makeup-counter salesclerk (Anna Faris) and commands the other guards on his watch with the intensity of a Marine sergeant in a war zone.
When the mall is repeatedly stalked by a flasher, Ronnie views the perv as an affront to all that is decent and wholesome in Forest Ridge Mall. He also welcomes the hunt for this unwelcome visitor as a way of proving his potential to become a real police officer. Trouble is, someone who's already a real police officer, the cynical and unsympathetic Det. Harrison (Ray Liotta), is called in by mall management to handle the situation.
For Ronnie, Harrison is an interloper in his jurisdiction. For Harrison, Ronnie is a klutzy rent-a-cop to be humored, then heckled.
Despite all the gleeful vulgarity and non-PC humor of the opening scenes, and despite all the clear signs that Ronnie has a ludicrously exaggerated (and entirely unjustified) sense of self-worth, it's not until around the 20-minute mark that writer-director Hill reveals just how unconventional he intends "Observe and Report" to be. As a prank, Harrison drops Ronnie off in a rough neighborhood, to give the security guard a taste of "real cop" life. What follows is a sequence that is all the more hilarious because the violence is so seriously brutal.
Much like the cruel and clueless martial-arts instructor in Hill's breakthrough debut feature, "The Foot Fist Way," Ronnie is more complex, and much scarier, than the kind of self-deluding boob auds usually encounter in comedies of this sort. With the invaluable aid of Rogen, who's never been better, Hill sustains an impressive degree of tension between seemingly contradictory elements. In fact, time and again throughout "Observe and Report," it may strike some viewers that, with just a few tweaks of the script, the scenario could have been played straight as a psychological drama in the vein of "Taxi Driver" (even though the ending plays more like "The King of Comedy").
At the same time, Hill earns big laughs with comic setpieces that are guaranteed to generate strong word of mouth. Highlights range from explosively funny gross-out gags - Faris is a great sport during the most amusing of these - to scenes of comic violence that elicit winces as well as laughs.
Supporting perfs are nicely disciplined across the board, so Faris and Weston are effectively uninhibited without seeming grotesque, and Liotta never betrays his character's intimidating toughness with a wink or a nod. Other standouts include Colette Wolfe as a Toast-a-Bun barista who warms to Ronnie, and John and Matthew Yuan as twin brothers who toil as Ronnie's most loyal underlings. Michael Pena is also memorable as the security chief's loyal assistant.
Filmed on location in the largely abandoned Winrock Mall in Albuquerque, N.M., "Observe and Report" boasts production values that are unobtrusively sufficient. Pic makes inspired use of a semi-obscure oldie on the soundtrack, the Yardbirds' "Over Under Sideways Down," during a sequence that will make viewers guffaw until they're thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
Camera (color), Tim Orr; editor, Zene Baker; music, Joseph Stephens; production designer, Chris Spellman; art director, Masako Masuda; set designer, Robert Fetchman; set decorator, Helen Britten; costume designer, Gary Jones; sound (Dolby), Christopher Gebert; supervising sound editor, Terry Rodman; visual effects, Pacific Vision Prods.; assistant director, Milos Milicevic; second unit director, Gary Hymes; second unit camera, Michael A. Benson; casting, Sheila Jaffe. Reviewed at SXSW Film Festival (Spotlight Premieres), March 16, 2009. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 86 MIN.
Posts: 27161 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
A positive review from John DeFore in the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER...
Bottom Line: "Foot Fist Way" director Jody Hill jumps to the mainstream but retains his icky edge.
AUSTIN -- Seth Rogen tests the limits of his lovable-lug persona in "Observe and Report," playing a character who is at best wildly delusional and at worst a stalker in need of professional care.
Barring a Terry Zwigoff return to "Bad Santa" territory, it's hard to imagine a filmmaker embracing this dubious hero to the extent writer-director Jody Hill does. The result gets plenty of laughs but will leave an odd aftertaste that could make "Observe" less successful than Rogen's less ambiguous outings.
Rogen plays Ronnie Barnhardt, a mall cop -- make that supervisor of mall security -- in search of any occasion to validate the odd feelings of importance he shares with the loyal half-wits on his staff. The undercurrent of wry self-awareness that has endeared Rogen to viewers in the past evaporates here, leaving a manchild with enough body mass to do serious damage and with an easily wounded ego.
First in line to dish up ego bruises is Brandi (Anna Faris, relishing her character's snootiness), a makeup counter employee who openly disdains Ronnie until a brush with the mall flasher throws her into disarray. Audiences expecting sensitive treatment of sexual assault should look elsewhere. Rejecting the businesslike attitude of the police detective assigned to investigate (a perfectly cast Ray Liotta), Ronnie encourages Brandi to believe her life is in danger and persuades her to go out with him.
Having a pervert on the loose not only jump-starts Ronnie's love life but affords him a reason to try out for a job on the actual police force. Although the screenplay gets some laughs out of this quixotic effort, the sequence also is where dissonance sets in for good: As a bystander notes after seeing Ronnie's dream crushed, what promised to be funny actually is pretty sad.
Partly but not completely thanks to Rogen's committed performance, "Observe" manages the funny-pathetic arc of its story line vastly better than Hill's debut film (and the breakthrough of Danny McBride, who appears briefly here) "The Foot Fist Way." It stays on the rails even when Ronnie goes off them completely and manages to get in a climactic chase sequence that crowds will be telling friends about the next day.
One thing this film does draw from Hill's earlier one is an impressively obscure soundtrack that might start with the Band but immediately segues to groups like Pyramid, whose musical vigor far exceeds their songwriting gifts. It's hard to imagine a more appropriate accompaniment for a rent-a-cop who thinks he's a vigilante hero.
Posts: 27161 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
A *** review from Peter Travers in ROLLING STONE...
"Listen, you ****ers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the ****s, the dogs, the filth, the ****." Those are the thoughts that flicker through the head of Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. And that's pretty much what Seth Rogen is thinking as mall security chief Ronnie Barnhardt in Observe and Report, which is — I should point out — a comedy. Funny as hell, that's how demonic it is. Imagine Scorsese directing Police Academy. Fans of Paul Blart: Mall Cop who think Rogen and writer-director Jody Hill are dishing out more family-friendly sap are in for an ass-kicking. If you've seen Hill's work on The Foot Fist Way and HBO's Eastbound & Down, you know this is one twisted dude.
Props to Hill and Rogen for believing you can play anything for a hoot, including R-rated sex and violence. Right away you know Rogen isn't going for lovable. Hair cropped scary-short, Ronnie prowls gut-first through the Forest Ridge Mall looking for scum. Shoplifters and skateboarders **** Ronnie off, but his focus is on a flasher who thinks he can freely dangle his dick, especially at Brandi (a sidesplittingly slutty Anna Faris), the blondie at the makeup counter on whom Ronnie has focused his freaky lust. Ronnie mistakenly relies on his right-hand man, Dennis, played by Michael Peña, who is miles away from the drama of Crash, Babel and World Trade Center and having a ball.
All the actors ace it, but the movie pivots on Ronnie's battle with Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta), the cop Ronnie wants to be. Liotta is Goodfellas tough, making no allowances for giggles. His mistake is to mock Ronnie, throwing him to a gang of vicious crackheads. It's this scene — in which Ronnie wields his flashlight like a police baton, beating his enemies bloody — that shows us just how bug-**** dangerous and delusional Ronnie is. Hill is fearless at pushing hot buttons: date rape, shooting up and worse. Just know this: Rogen is nutso hilarious, nailing every note of mirth and malice. Even when Hill goes way too far, and he does, Observe and Report revels in creeping you out and making you laugh — hard.
Posts: 27161 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Wow. How unexpected. Who would have thought that Travis Bickle would pop up in so many of these reviews. It seems that this movie is being marketed as something much different than what it is.
Originally posted by MysteriousRent: Wow. How unexpected. Who would have thought that Travis Bickle would pop up in so many of these reviews. It seems that this movie is being marketed as something much different than what it is.
It seems like its being advertised as a dirtier "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" when it is much darker, weirder and violent than that flick.
Posts: 27161 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Originally posted by MysteriousRent: Wow. How unexpected. Who would have thought that Travis Bickle would pop up in so many of these reviews. It seems that this movie is being marketed as something much different than what it is.
It seems like its being advertised as a dirtier "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" when it is much darker, weirder and violent than that flick.
I wonder how much the surprising success of Paul Blart is affecting the marketing.
Originally posted by MysteriousRent: Wow. How unexpected. Who would have thought that Travis Bickle would pop up in so many of these reviews. It seems that this movie is being marketed as something much different than what it is.
All of the local papers here pointed out the Taxi Driver similarities too. Unfortunately, I don't think it will do near as well as Paul Blart even if it had come out first because the advertisements totally are misleading. I'm not sure if they would have been different had PB not come out first, but my guess is that the advertisements probably still would have been misleading since most people expect to see Seth Rogen in his loveable teddy bear roles and not as Travis Bickle.
