Movie Review: Observe & Report
Don't confuse Observe and Report with that other mallcop movie "Paul Blart: Mallcop." The latter was a fuzzy, feel-good family comedy starring Kevin James as a lovable, goofy head of security at a mall. Observe, on the other hand, is much darker, often violent, bizarre and mostly unfunny movie starring Seth Rogen as a type of Travis Bickle mall-cop.
Sure both characters pine for a local shop girl and aspire to join the police force, but that's where the similarities end. Observe has Rogen starring as Ronnie Barnhardt, an often-delusional security guard who feels if he can only solve the case of a mysterious flasher terrorizing the mall patrons, he'll get a spot on the police force and win the heart of make-up counter clerk played by Anna Faris.
Rogen, often a writer and producer on his comedies, is just a gun for hire here and it certainly is not the best choice for him. The movie plays like an attempt for Rogen to try to break out of his lovable doofus mold by doing the equivalent of Adam Sandler trying his hand at darker comedy in Punch Drunk Love. It doesn't work. The script is uneven in tone, leaving Rogen funny in some scenes, and falling flat in others.
Gifted comedians such as Patton Oswalt, Aziz Ansari and Danny McBride (let's also add the talented Celia Weston to this bunch as Rogen's alcoholic mother) keep the tone light and entertaining, so when the drugging, violence and nudity does enter the picture, it often comes out of left field and very much as a shock. It is not clear if the intent is to be funny, or not, so the end result is just confusion and bewilderment.
Faris is perfectly cast as the hot make-up girl who gets drunk on her date with Rogen and lets him sleep with her. Her comedic timing and lack of vanity remind us why she's one of Hollwyood's go-to girls for comedy. What other actresses are willing to show themselves having sex and throwing-up at the same time? Meanwhile Michael Pena (Crash, Babel) is hilarious as Rogen's mall-cop sidekick. In one of the film's many non-sequitirs, the duo turn over to the dark side and become a wacked out version of Napoleon Dynamite and Pedro. Unfortunately the entire bit is just too deranged and is likely to offend more than anything else. Newcomer Collette Wolfe, who plays a sympathetic food court employee, seems to be the only character with any real depth here, but unfortunately she's in the wrong movie.
Whereas I was completely turned off by this film, my husband found it so appealingly bizarre, he's convinced Observe & Report might one day be looked upon as a cult classic. He and I will have to differ on that.
Without his usual collaborators - be they Judd Apatow, writing partner Evan Goldberg or past co-stars such as Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill and James Franco -- Rogen proves that leaving the nest is not always a good thing. Observe is a worthy attempt, but the "Report" is a bad one.
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Not as bad as Zorianna Kit would have it, O&R is closer to the brilliant triumph that Scott Mendelson describes. The theater I was in was laughing reliably and often uproariously.
Sociologically interesting and damn funny, I suspect O&R will stand as a minor classic of low brow comedies, notable for deftly combining hilarity with social commentary about Hobbesian nastiness and brutality.
Still I couldn't rate it higher than Good, 3.5 beams on a scale of 5. My full review is at http://www
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I liken the negative reviews of Observe and Report to those I read from narrow minded people who went to see The Cable Guy and were disappointed when Jim Carrey didn’t come out on the screen making animal sounds out of his ass. Observe and Report is an excellent dark comedy which explores a new dynamic of the very talented creator Jody Hill’s style. I spent most of the movie laughing as did my wife. Seth Rogen doesn’t depart too far from his typical obscene, goofy, and oafish characters played in movies like Superbad, Knocked Up, and Pineapple Express. Anna Faris, Ray Liotta, were cast and performed perfectly for this film. Collette Wolfe also brought a great performance to the big screen and I look forward to seeing more of her work.
As a rape survivor whose victimization occurred while blacked out—I find this movie to be repugnant and damaging. April is National Sexual Assault Month and should be reserved for creating awareness of this horrific plague on our community. Please do not see this film as it makes an utter mockery of rape.
I cannot even begin to understand the cultural damage this is going to do to further harm women in our society. 1 in 6 women become victims of sexual assault in this country. The reality is that many females will be walking into the theaters over the next couple days with no knowledge that this scene is in this movie as it has not shown up in the commercials. This could trigger devastating PTSD affects and will cause a re-victimization for so many.
Author of Blackout Girl: Growing Up and Drying Out in America
www.jennif
I'm truly sorry you had to go through that horrible experience,
but it does not justify boycotting the movie.
By your logic, someone who was violently robbed would find hard to watch ... well ... most movies out there!
It doesn't mean the rest of us have to boycott them.
And the movie has a warning about explicit sex and violence ... what more do you want ...
There's a difference between a warning of explicit sex and violence, and making a joke about date rape. There are enough guys out there who think one way to get lucky is to buy the girl drinks until she wants to...whate
Rape is not robbery, or even getting the shite kicked out of ypu. I won't be going to see this movie, and I'd like you to understand why. I'm totally against censorship.
Perhaps someone who was violently robbed would find most movies (at least the kind you see) hard to watch. Not sure what your point is.
I won't pretend to have seen this movie - and I will not. However, seeing the trailer above, I have to agree that it's in very poor taste and terribly insensitive to portray this type of sex as a joke. It seems that movies have to be more and more outrageous to make it at the box office. I personally prefer a quality, thought provoking movie.
"Faris is perfectly cast as the hot make-up girl who gets drunk on her date with Rogen and lets him sleep with her."?!?!?
From all other accounts and reviews of this movie, Faris' character is date-raped. I have not seen this movie (and don't intend to based on the fact that every review is bad), but this is the first account of this scene that suggests that what happened was consensual, if drunk, sex and not rape.
I hope you are correct and that it is not rape in a movie advertised as a slapstick comedy. I fear that it is rape easily dismissed as "drunk sex."
I've seen the movie, and the scene doesn't depict a rape - it's consensual sex. Disgusting, but consensual. Most of the people insisting it is a rape with haven't seen the movie, or believe that it's impossible to consent when intoxicated.
Rogan's character idolizes Faris and thinks she's the woman of his dreams. She is a die-hard party-til-you-puke kind of girl, and it appears that this is her idea of a normal evening. (She's also dumber than a box of rocks.) I wouldn't want my son, if I had one, think that this is a typical female, but that's not really the point.
I get that you were turned off by this movie and found it offensive, so at least there's that.
Even so, you write that Anna Faris's character gets drunk and "lets" the Seth Rogen character sleep with her. Really? Do you really think that someone who is semi-conscious and vomiting is in a position to give informed consent? Why not call that scene what it is: date rape. It doesn't really matter that they give her character a slurred laugh line that implies that she has given consent. If someone is falling down drunk and vomiting, it's clear that they are in no position to make rational decisions (and it's highly dubious they would want sex in those circumstances anyway).
Clearly you already found this movie off-putting. Why hesitate to accurately describe that scene? Do you not see it as a date rape? I'm finding it incredibly interesting to read different reviews and see how various critics label that scene. Some are correctly calling it a date rape. One review I read actually said that Rogen "makes love" to her. Another said the scene is "hilariously disgusting". It's no wonder that sexual violence is so prevalent in our society when so many people can't or won't recognize it when it's on-screen in front of them.
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