Observe and Report

Observe and Report is hilarious. It's hilarious in a way that no other Hollywood comedy is allowed to be. Why this movie gets to be hilarious in this way is a tribute to Jody Hill's skill as a director, his producers in their roles, Seth Rogen as an audacious actor and Sacha Baron Cohen for breaking some new ground and freeing up comedians to do new things with potentially offensive material with his Borat film.

I've only heard murmurs about this film's early box office returns, but they aren't fantastic, so I imagine it'll be difficult to get another film like this released in the future. But variety is the spice of life. I don't want another Observe and Report, I want Observe and Report and I couldn't be happier that it exists. If this sort of thing is going to a one-off, there's no way in hell that a better film could have come out of it.

It's a film less about plot, although plots--several of them--exist, than it is about the multi-layered character in the center of it all. The plots exist to serve him and to demonstrate his fragile state of mind in the same way that everything about the film (the supporting cast, the cinematography, the costumes, the art direction) exists to serve the character. All the naysaying critics are clearly missing that this film is an exercise in expressionism. That means the off-beat pace, the strange developments in plot, the way characters seem to deviate from their assigned personalities, are all there to show the protagonist's progressively weaker state of mind.

And while I'm on the subject, I'd like to line up every critic that called the protagonist annoying, or creepy, or an asshole or whatever, and kick each and every one of them in the balls. There are tons of great films about assholes (The King of Comedy and The Godfather spring to mind), but these small-minded critics get scared when they're confronted with anything that doesn't play to its greatness and can be seen as disposable so that they can make their quota of negative reviews and bring in readers by slamming a film that they already decided they weren't going to like. There's a reason that it takes so long for a film to be considered "great", and that's because progression rarely arrives like a meteor. It arrives and people toss it away for being different. It takes an established critic with balls to point out a film that's great but different, and I am wholeheartedly convinced that this is a great film.

But I digress. The plot, for all you uninitiated. Ronnie Barnhardt, as played by Seth Rogen, is the unhinged head of security at his local mall. I don't know if it's mentioned in the film (I think it might be), but he is almost certainly bi-polar to the most extreme degree (pun). He keeps himself high with his surprisingly large amount of authority and with his lust directed at a girl working at a cosmetics counter. When she and several other people are flashed by a mysterious pervert, Ronnie decides to use this opportunity to catch the pervert, win the girl of his dreams (the slutty, vapid and hateful girl at the cosmetics counter, Brandi, as played by Anna Faris) and become a real police officer with a gun and a badge and all that.

But it's all a backdrop to show Ronnie's mental state, and a better character study is hard to find. Rarely does a film go this far to get into its protagonist's head and rarely is that film entertaining in a commercial sense at the same time. It's the perfect fusion of art and commerce.

I can't get into this film's style of comedy without any examples (because I'm an inarticulate failure of a critic) and giving examples would spoil at least some of the comedy which would be inexcusable. The last time I laughed this hard at a film was at the endlessly clever In Bruges about fourteen months ago, and any comparison to In Bruges is a mighty one.

But ye be warned: this is an enormously, twistedly, violently, tenaciously, hilariously dark film about primal male rage, delusion, depression and authority. If you can't stomach this sort of thing, get out of my sight and go watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop. You're not wanted here and you'll only make things worse for a great film with an uphill battle.

Screw you all.

10/10