The Secret Policeman’s Other Mall | In Observe and Report, Seth Rogen is part Paul Blart, part Vic Mackey.
Directed by Jody Hill. Starring Seth Rogen, Anna Faris, Ray Liotta, Michael Peña. Now playing.
****
Mel Brooks once made a very simple distinction between comedy and tragedy. “Tragedy,” he said, “is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.”
Writer/director Jody Hill’s pitch-black comedy Observe and Report makes a laugh riot out of what would be a tragedy if it were a story on the evening news. It’s a disturbing diamond in the rough — “feel-bad” comedy at its finest — and it instantly marks Jody Hill as one of the most subversively funny creators in Hollywood today. An influential voice in the terrifying “loser empowerment” movement, Hill has an amazing talent to get you to root for some of the most despicable characters you’d never want to meet, like Forest Ridge Mall head of security Ronnie Barnhardt.
Life at Forest Ridge is pretty peaceful. You can thank Ronnie (a fully committed Seth Rogen) for that. He commands the counters and kiosks with a watchful eye and an iron fist. Sure, he has his problems (he’s a bipolar, gun-obsessed authority junkie who likes to shoot paper targets in the face at the gun range in his spare time), but who doesn’t? Ronnie’s power is threatened, however, when a trenchcoated flasher descends on the mall’s parking lot. The flasher makes it personal when he waves his bits in the direction of Brandi (Anna Faris), the focus of Ronnie’s unspoken love. Things at the mall get even more serious when the police assign a detective (Ray Liotta) to the case. This usurpation of his power doesn’t sit well with Ronnie, but deciding this might be a shot at the big time, he makes it his mission to bring in the flasher no matter what.
Ronnie bears a strong resemblance to the protagonists of Hill’s other work (the 2007 independent film The Foot Fist Way and the hilarious HBO series Eastbound and Down). They all adhere to an almost honourable “loser’s code,” and they all share a ludicrously warped sense of self-importance. In the case of Ronnie, his delusions of grandeur are nearly certifiable.
Rogen takes a much-needed break from playing doofy but lovable oafs to try his hand at an unlovable, yet no less doofy one. It’s a lot of fun to watch Rogen transform from one of those ineffectual authority figures that modern society demands yet barely tolerates into a seething, bone-snapping personification of justice declaring war upon the everyday outrages most of us let roll off our backs.
Faris, meanwhile, is delightfully trashy as the cosmetics counter/mall-slut Brandi. Her natural comic charisma shines through the snapping gum and vacuous eye-rolling, making an utterly unpleasant character an object worthy of Ronnie’s affection.
Hill has admitted to being inspired by Martin Scorsese movies like Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, and like Scorsese’s films, Observe and Report makes no apologies to any viewers whose sensibilities he may (and will) offend. There are no excuses here for the appalling behaviour of its misanthropic characters, which may leave some moviegoers cold. But for sickos like me who think that, deep down, Travis Bickle was secretly a really funny guy (c’mon — he took Cybill Shepherd to a porno on their first date!), Observe and Report is a nasty little treat guaranteed to disgust, repulse, and offend.
But in a good way.
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