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Ronnie Barnhardt's mother tries to be supportive, but she doesn't quite know how -- and she's drunk. "You may not be the smartest person in the world," she says, "but you're handsome. From certain angles."
Ronnie (Seth Rogen) is going through a rough patch. He was the head of mall security until a flasher set off a chain of events that left him bloody and bruised in body and spirit.
"Observe and Report," bizarrely, is the second film about a mall cop in three months. The first was "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," which sold itself with the comical image of Kevin James on a Segway.
"Observe and Report" is not "Paul Blart." It is not a sequel to that movie. It is not rated PG like that movie, but R for full frontal male nudity, drug use, sexual content, violence and language, including a scene where adversaries bat the f-word back and forth two dozen times.
- Starring: Seth Rogen, Ray Liotta
- Rating: R for pervasive language, graphic nudity, drug use, sexual content and violence
- Web site: observe-and-report.warnerbros.com
The movie opens with the mall snapshots we all know -- giddy teens with shopping bags, misbehaving children and scolding parents, speed walkers doing laps in sweats, food court patrons -- and one we don't. That would be a pervert in a raincoat in the parking lot.
When police Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta) is summoned, a turf war breaks out between him and Ronnie, who has aspirations of becoming a cop and is trying to woo a slutty makeup saleswoman named Brandi (Anna Faris).
"Observe and Report" is sophomoric although mildly amusing until it begins its descent into "Taxi Driver" territory. Then it's disquieting and disturbing, and the minuscule measure of good will it accumulated drains away.
Writer-director Jody Hill also made "Foot Fist Way," about a tae kwon do instructor played by Danny McBride, who here has a cameo as a crack dealer. Hill goes for the down-and-dirty laughs involving rage, humiliation, booze, vomiting, Tasers, heads being thumped against commercial ovens or wooden stools or concrete floors, and slugfests.
Rogen, clean shaven and with closely shorn hair, looks little like his characters in recent movies or even like the svelte actor today. He and his oddball band of security guards, including identical twins, make for fine underdogs, but Hill's brand of humor eludes me.
Again.
