April
10
Observe and Report Wins Mixed Reviews
When I first saw the trailer for Observe and Report I knew that this movie wasn't a broad commercial play. Something was wrong with it. When I saw Jody Hill's movie--which is a very dark comedy to say the least--I understood what was disturbing about the trailer. The character at the center of the movie--the manic security cop played by Seth Rogen--is mentally unbalanced. And he is deluded about wanting to save his shopping mall from outside enemies. In other words, the movie examines our worst fantasies about what we learn from movies. And it's a deconstruction that is also funny. While I have some issues with the ending, which just doesn't add up to anything we can reasonably deal with, the movie is definitely worth checking out. And Warner Bros. deserves credit for letting these guys play this thing out. The studio knew full well that it wouldn't play in every quarter. But they also figured out that pulling their punches wasn't going to fly either.
What's fascinating about the reviews today is how all over the map they are. Some critics deliver raves, while others, most notably the NYT's Manohla Dargis, find the movie truly reprehensible:
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.
Here's EW's Lisa Schwarzbaum:
Director Hill previously demonstrated his unique comedic ability to screw with American normalcy in the great, wack martial-arts movie The Foot Fist Way and co-created the warpy HBO series Eastbound & Down. To his credit, he leads Observe and Report down every alley a mainstream comedy is supposed to avoid. The violence is bone-crunching. (Pineapple Express, directed by David Gordon Green, celebrated the same aesthetic of brutality, and no wonder: Hill and Green share an alumni brotherhood at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, as well as the amazing gimlet eye of cinematographer Tim Orr on both projects.) Women are depicted as skanks and slatterns. Ethnicity and sexual orientation are freely mocked. Unrepentant drinking and drugging go unchastised. The flasher flaps vigorously and often — yes, that's a penis I see before me — leading to a chase scene through the mall that makes the naked wrestling set piece in Borat look coy. The result is a crazy mosaic of Americana with tiles scattered and missing. Need I observe and report that the view isn't for every taste? It sure is for mine.
Slate's Dana Stevens admits that she doesn't know what to make of the movie. UPDATE: Here's a round-up of reactions to the devisive date-rape and ending.
I interviewed Hill and Rogen at SXSW about what they thought they were doing. Here are my Flip Cam interviews:
Find more videos like this on AnneCam
Find more videos like this on AnneCam
Subscribe to this blog's feed
There's also that controversy about the drunk rape scene.
But hey, frat boys *will* love this film. After all, pro-torture cronies Bush and Co. were all a bunch of frat boys.
Posted by: Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist! | April 10, 2009 at 12:52 PM
This is, however flawed, an attempt at a serious indie style movie, for the moron commenter above, this has been missed.
Seth Rogen and all these guys are not frat boy types you idiots! The whole "frat pack" thing is nonesense, based on Old School, a movie that is a SATIRE of fraterneties. The character in these movies are always losers, not gung ho frat boys, watch stepbrothers (obviously a lesser movie admittedly) and you see that the frat-boy character (the brother) is the BUTT of all jokes. How so many people that think themselves intelligent can prattle on so idiotically is astounding.
Posted by: STE | April 10, 2009 at 04:28 PM
What an idiotic comment. Devin over at CHUD who's as Leftie as they come gave this movie 10/10.
http://chud.com/articles/articles/18950/1/REVIEW-OBSERVE-AND-REPORT/Page1.html
Vic
Posted by: ScreenRant.com | April 10, 2009 at 07:16 PM
I am not shocked by the mixed reviews. Hill and his group are entertained by bluntly vulgar humor. The anti-hero story lines probably give the audience a character that they know (and are embarrased to know) in their own family / neighborhood. Everyone knows a Danny McBride...but not everyone will see humor in his ignorance. A worry I have with these types of films is that the lowest common denominator of white males will take these brash characters and mimic them.
Growing up in Kansas City, I've already seen idiots acting like Kenny Powers, because they find it funny.
But out here, in California... from safe distance of a majority of those idiots... i laugh at the intelligence and humor that Hill & Co have brought to the silver screen.
Posted by: seanH | April 10, 2009 at 10:38 PM
Your article very interesting, I have introduced a lot of friends look at this article, the content of the articles there will be a lot of attractive people to appreciate, I have to thank you such an article.
Posted by: runescape gold | April 10, 2009 at 11:46 PM
I LOVE this film. I think it's daring, different and takes some real honest to goddness chances. To me it's a refreshing break from the usual bland "seen-it-all-before" usual movie studio fodder. (and not ONE comic book super hero in sight...THANK GOD!) No doubt it was intended to be controversial and no doubt it's not for everyone. Like Hill's Eastbound and Down I think the funniest show currently on TV (which has just been renewed for a second season)
People are comparing it to Taxi Driver but in reality it's closer in spirit to Jim Carrey's much misunderstood but equally terrific comedy The Cable Guy which in which he like Rogen played a very creepy and obviously mentally distrubed person
Posted by: Sergio | April 11, 2009 at 07:00 AM
Thanks for collecting all of this in one place, and contrasting it with interviews with the filmmakers. More proof that critics and journalists are a crucial part of the film/TV watching experience...with or without newspapers.
Posted by: ProgGrrl | April 11, 2009 at 07:39 AM
Thanks for the warning. I'll see it on cinemax
Posted by: Ramesh | April 11, 2009 at 12:05 PM
"Taxi Driver" was the comparison that came to mind when I read those comments about O&R's "cop out" ending. Meditate on that.
Posted by: David C. | April 11, 2009 at 09:52 PM
Anne, amongst the professional reviewers, your own Joe Leydon best captures O&R's paradoxical essence by calling it "Travis Bickle: Mall Cop."
I observe in my review that while the movie is spectacularly mean, violently so, it’s no more cruelly subversive than was Borat.
The problem is that the real Travis Bickles of the world won’t get the absurdity, instead seeing Seth Rogen's Ronnie Barnhardt as the guy they could become if only they were brave enough. That’s the day you won’t want to go to the mall.
Wick
Full review at http://www.wikpik.com/movie_reviews/1782-observe-and-report
Posted by: D. Benjamin Wickowitz | April 12, 2009 at 01:23 PM
SUPER BORING! I was so dissapointed with this picture after looking forward to laughing for days after watching it. Pointless humor done well is truly priceless but this was pointlessly boring. Sure there were chase scenes and fighting and sex and drugs but it all failed to make me or the others in the theatre (several people left half way through)feel anything other then I should have seen something else. I am a fan of Jody Hill and Rogen, hell I use to shop at the mall they shot this in in Albuquerque, but they wasted $30 million making this one.
Posted by: Van Varlo | April 16, 2009 at 02:21 PM