I went to Observe and Report, expecting a slapsticky, gagfest making fun of mall culture; a slightly less porky Paul Blart. Instead, what I got was only a joke or two away from a tragic after school special.
Observe and Report is the story of Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen), a fairly stupid, self centered, Mall Security guard with bi-polar disorder. Ronnie suffers from serious delusions of grandeur, and he and his team of misfit mall rent-a-cops stumble through the movie ostensibly on the track of a dangerous flasher who has been terrorizing the malls female patrons. Ronnie is in love with Brandi (Anna Faris), a trashy cosmetics counter salesgirl, and after she is exposed to the flasher, Ronnie vows to rid the mall of the pervert. At the same time, the local police are called in, and Det Harrison (Ray Liotta) arrives on the scene to do actual police work to address the flasher, as well as ongoing robberies at the mall. Ronnie antagonizes Det Harrison, then misinterprets Harrison’s jokes at his expense as a fatherly push to make the most of his life as a police officer. Ronnie’s application to the police force is a disaster, as are his short lived love life with Brandi, and his friendships with his fellow mall cops.
All of Ronnie’s dysfunction and some of the ancillary characters make for some pretty funny segments. However, as one character in the movie says, “I thought this was going to be funny, but now that I listen, it’s just kind of sad.” Ronnie is not a very likeable character, except that you realize that henever really had a shot at success. His father left after realizing all of his “special needs,” his mother is a fall down drunk who sleeps with his friends, he’s bi-polar, but going off his meds, and by surrounding himself with small town mall losers who feed his delusions, he is set up from the beginning for a massive fall. I’ll try not to spoil the movie, but the last third of the film could easily have been something reported on the evening news or turned into a Dateline special report, and not for good reasons. It’s just kind of sad, and the ending seems like a contrived attempt to wrap things up in a happy package, where no happy ending was really deserved.
Observe and Report does have some funny material. The acting is decent, and Rogen is completely believeable. Faris has nicer legs than I realized, but she’s such a skank in the movie, that she’s not really likeable either. The movie is rated R for some nudity, drug use, language, and violence. A little bit of everything. This is definitely not a little kids’ movie.
Overall, I have to say that I was disappointed. It seems like the filmmakers had a comedy script and a tragic drama, and tried to squash them together, slap a “dark comedy” label on it, and see what happened. If you’re looking for standard Rogen or Faris type stuff, you might not get what you expected. It’s not horrible, but I left kind of wishing I had done Fast and Furious instead.