Observe and Report

I've watched this film almost half a dozen times so I guess I am part of the Observe and Report cult. All you people giving it one, two star reviews...really? Are you that masochistic that you have to write a dissertation on something you hate? This is a great movie that knocks you on your ass with its dark humor and is indeed offensive. In fact, I would say if you're not offended in certain scenes, then there may be actually something wrong with you. Go see your shrink and talk about it. Despite that, there are also scenes that are moving and true to life which make this more than just some exercise in shoddy exploitation. At any rate, I love this movie and own a copy (if that says anything) Why you ask? Well, for one thing this is a great movie about a delusional man with bipolar disorder. The film has dream elements where he comes close to realizing his over the top ambitions only to be smacked in the face by societal regulations. On a serious note, there are a lot of young men who cannot fit into society and find a deeper purpose for living. The mall seems like the perfect metaphor for what has happened to American society. It is a boring, stultifying environment where banality is seen as the highest good and crass consumerism is the almighty God. Certain professions like security guard seem to attract nutballs, guys who dream of a police badge and a gun yet have to settle for chasing off skateboarders from the mall parking lot while carrying mace and at most a tazer. Now is the film an indictment of a crazed society and its shiftless youth or is it a nihilistic celebration of recklessness and mental illness? Even after watching it as many times as I have, I'm not sure I can come to any stunning conclusion. Its opened ended and while I know that can infuriate people looking for closure (and worse, a message) its the truth about this shocking and original film. Let me say that you owe it to yourself to check it out. When truly stupid comedies are abundant (usually ones about young men smoking pot and trying to get laid), its refreshing to see a film that dares to be wildly different in true punk rock fashion.

An anonymous flasher exposes himself to shoppers in the Forest Ridge Mall parking lot. The head of mall security, Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen), makes it his mission to catch the flasher. He is helped by Charles (Jesse Plemons), Dennis (Michael Pena), and the Yuen twins (John Yuan and Matthew Yuan). Ronnie's dream girl, Brandi (Anna Faris) is flashed the next day, and she becomes hysterical. Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta) comes and takes over the situation, this makes Ronnie very angry. Ronnie decides to take the case into his own hands.

A incredibly disgusting film where Seth Rogen is at his funniest, but a great performance by Rogen cannot save this crude film. Observe and Report is a very dark and unpleasant experience. A cliché thing to say, but I found myself looking at the clock waiting for this film to end. Besides for Rogen Observe and Report has very few laughs. The perfect example of why you can't base and entire films laughs on dirty humor. Some of the most unfortunate, and unwanted nudity I have even had to sit through. Jody Hill tries to shock and awe viewers will dark humor, and a unique storyline, but instead creates and unfortunate film. The most surprising thing about this film is that even while the film is very tough to sit through, Rogen's performance still almost carries the film.

Jody Hill is the co-creator and executive producer of the HBO series Eastbound and Down. Eastbount and Down has dark humor and a very outrageous plot as like Observe and Report, but Observe and Report is not able to link together as well. Hill's first film The Foot Fist Way was seen by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell who bought the distribution rights. And also developed a cult following. Hill was allowed on the set of Knocked Up, and he fell in love with Seth Rogen's acting style. He became even more of a Rogen fan after the release of Superbad. Hill both directed and wrote the script for Observe and Report. Unfortunately it just didn't have as great of an effect as his previous work. Observe and Report's script is very poorly made. Hill's direction is well done, but the film is an absolute mess.

Seth Rogen's performance is one of the best and hilarious performances from a comedy since probably Steve Carell's in 40 Year Old Virgin. Besides for Rogen there are no other performances worth mentioning. Anna Faris as Brandi is a very untalented performance. Ray Liotta as Detective Harrison is nothing special, no lines or scenes worth mentioning. One performance does not keep a film in motion. Each time Rogen is off the screen this film just crashes and burns.

Observe and Report only grossed about 25 million in the box office, one of the lowest grossing films that Rogen has stared in. This film had plenty of hype. Rogen as the lead, the co-creator of Eastbound and Down as the director, and also starring Ray Liotta. But like so many comedy films, it disappointed. It seems like each year there are more and more gross- out comedies that are released. Hopefully this film will help people realize that these films very rarely work, but probably not. The amount of awful nudity in this film will make you have to check and make sure you are not at a Jackass film. Observe and Report is a film you need to brace yourself to sit through. A film Rogen fans will want to pass on, and if you are a Jody Hill fan you too will be disappointed.

How Jody Hill's second feature film, Observe and Report, got made at all is something of an insane miracle let alone by a major studio by Warner brothers. Perhaps it was all thanks to Seth Rogen, who recently acted with Hill's main guy Danny McBride in Pineapple Express, who got it green-lit. Because, frankly, this is such a ballsy and weird "comedy" that rests in a nether-region of Paul Blart: Mall Cop, One Hour Photo, and any given Seth Rogen vehicle comedy. It's in simplest terms about a mall cop (or "head of security") who is bi-polar, thinking he's on track to become an actual police officer, trying to track down a flasher who keeps exposing his privates to any women in sight, and quickly goes even MORE bug-f*** crazy when he forgets to take his pills. It's one of the oddest birds in cinema of the year.

And I can't say I exactly "enjoyed" myself, at least in the same way I did with previous Seth Rogen vehicles. This isn't Knocked Up or Zack and Miri Make a Porno where Rogen was this likable guy that the supposed schleps in the audience could identify with him in situations. Ronnie Bernhardt is the kind of guy who if he wasn't a screw-loose might almost be a kind of enthusiastic bad-ass. But as he is he is pushy, off-putting, obscene, at one point an arguable date raper, and is obsessed with using guns over his mace and tazer. He has a drunk mom, one of those almost conventional female things going on where he's "macking" on the ditsy cosmetics girl (Anna Faris) while the happy but tortured-for-her-broken-ankle girl working behind the bakery (Collette Wolf) that gets really bizarre, and a final thirty minutes that... I'll just leave it as it is here.

Suffice to say it's actually brave for Rogen to take on this character and not make us like him, at all, in the slightest. He may even have helped with some of the ad-libbing (one of the funniest scenes is between himself and a brown-skinned individual with a constant "F-you" back-and-forth where the pitch of their two-word insults get lower and lower), and if nothing else he is quite watchable in the role of Ronnie. What works against the movie is that it usually doesn't know what it exactly wants to be, and the director's ambitions get ahead of him. It's a comedy but at the least as dark as a black hole, and as a drama about a psychotic on the edge it gets too crude and obvious with white trash bits. It has a similar level of awkward tension fused with a sense of humor that is meant to illicit laughs from the protagonist's chutzpah and go-for-broke quality like Hill's The Foot Fist Way, maybe its only real link.

To be fair, I wasn't the biggest fan of that film, even as I can understand its appeal as a cult favorite. Maybe Observe and Report will get that too. I was astonished at times where the film went to with taking its character's exploits to a dangerous but somewhat logical conclusion. Other times I did indeed laugh a good deal, either from a moment of real randomness (I did like the joke on the twin Asian guards, "You're my infantry, if I lose one, God gives me another"). I can't say I exactly liked the movie a good deal, but I do respect it. It will split an audience as to what the hell it even is, or if it's as funny as it might be or if it follows its Taxi Driver roots to full-tilt. It's a true-blue curio, and I wouldn't either recommend it or tell you it's comedy poison.

For some reason, this movie seems to be forgotten to Seth's other movies, and I can't understand why (or maybe I just have a thing for dark humor). At the same time, I understand it's not the type of movie everyone will like. Doesn't change my rating, though.

This movie surprised me in a very positive way, i really liked the balance of dark and gritty comedy but at the same time also cute and beautiful (often in a very twisted way).

It was a refreshing movie to watch, maybe not as good as Bad-Ass (exact same kind of twisted humor) but nevertheless a movie that shouldn't be missed by anyone who loves dark comedy.

With comedy and horror it's impossible to go by the IMDb score, i think a 6 a way too low rating for this movie, but if you're frequent IMDb visitor you know about this already. People just have extremely varied taste when it comes to comedy and horror, either you love it or you hate it..