
Observe and Report, opening today from director Jody Hill, has been billed as “the Taxi Driver of mall cop movies.” (Whereas Paul Blart Mall Cop was more like the Big Momma’s House of mall cop movies). The question remains: is it any good? Relax, stupid, that’s what I’m gonna tell ya!
It might be an oversimplification to say that if you like Hill’s HBO series Eastbound and Down that you’ll like Observe and Report. The protagonists are similarly messed up and the tone is similar, but Danny McBride is a lot better at playing this kind of outrageous, over-the-top character. He and Will Ferrell might be the only two guys in Hollywood who’ve ever pulled it off. And that’s not a knock on Seth Rogen. In some ways it’s actually to his credit – he’s almost too believable to play a character so inconsistent.
Rogen plays a schlubby Travis Bickle – unstable, self-serious, loves power over others, lives with his mom, and is in love with the slutty pill-head makeup girl played by Anna Faris – a dead ringer for your sister. It’d probably be a waste to give you any more of the plot than that, except to say that the first half hour of this movie is truly atrocious. I like the f-word a lot more than most people, but that doesn’t make Seth Rogen and Aziz Ansari screaming “F*CK YOU!” “NO, F*CK YOU!” at each other for five minutes funny. It’s not. I’d rather get punched in the dick. After the slow start, the humor finally gets its panties off in the scene in which Rogen goes on a date with Faris, who single-handedly rescues the entire first half of the movie.
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