Observe and Report

City Paper Grade: B

by Shaun Brady

City Paper Grade: B

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Lovable-loser comedy into a much, much darker place, Observe and Report could just as well have been called Travis Bickle: Mall Cop. The similarities to Kevin James' recent hit are uncanny; but where Paul Blart's dreams of becoming a cop were dashed by a girth that enveloped a heart of gold, the limitations of Seth Rogen's Ronnie Barnhardt are psychological, not physical, and what lies underneath is not pretty. It's refreshing to see Rogen play an actual character rather than simply amble his way through another stoner comedy.

Although Observe and Report is at times uproariously funny, director Jody Hill is less interested in pursuing laughs than in following situations through the point where they're funny and until they reach discomfort. Every slip on a banana peel is inevitably followed by the thud of skull on concrete; Hill keeps watching as blood flows into the sidewalk cracks and the wound scabs over.

He mined similar territory in his first film, The Foot Fist Way, which at first appeared to be a Napoleon Dynamite-style mock-the-misfit flick, but exposed the insecurities and traumas underlying Danny McBride's belligerent tae kwon do instructor until it was easier to be creeped out than condescend. As much as Rogen lays on the awkward charm, the gun-fetishizing, casually racist Ronnie gets harder to love as his meds wear off and the violence keeps drawing real blood.

When a flasher begins haunting the mall where he works as a security guard, Ronnie declares that the "disgusting pervert may be the best thing that ever happened to me," seeing the path cleared to demonstrate his heroism and win the affection of party girl Anna Faris (underused, but another example of a stock character taken to its most unpleasant extremes). In opposing two equally disturbed characters, Hill manages to expose the double-standard of a society (especially a movie-made one) that extols violence and puritanically shies from sexuality, especially in the outrageous final moments.