Observe and Report

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Director: Jody Hill

Stars: Seth Rogen, Anna Faris, Michael Pena, Ray Liotta, Collette Woolfe, Celia Weston

Year: 2009 Running Time: 86 mins Rating:

Like Taxi Driver on a bag of funny mushrooms, this is the blackest comedy you'll see all year. Knocked Up's Seth Rogen is Ronnie Barnhardt, a delusional mall cop wishing to rid the world of evil, particularly a tubby flasher and a cat burglar, with only a gun fetish and moronic self-confidence at his disposal. Anna Farris is the trashy cosmetic counter girl of his dreams, Ray Liotta the detective upon whom he declares war, and Michael Pena Ronnie's flamboyant right-hand man in this dangerously funny movie.

Review

Forget the fuzzy feelgood of Paul Blart: Mall Cop, this is an altogether more psycho take on similar material, and a big leap forward for writer/director Jody Hill after his unfunny debut, The Foot Fist Way.

Kudos to Seth Rogen who risks all that Knocked Up goodwill on Ronnie Barnhardt, a memorably unnerving creation pitched somewhere between Travis Bickle, The King of Comedy's Rupert Pupkin, and Gareth from The Office.

With dreams of becoming a police officer and gunning down the cancerous cloud of chaos that haunts his nightmares, Observe and Report's masterstroke is in daring to get 86 minutes of comic mileage out of a character who could be an instant turn-off.

By pitching the supporting cast at a level of grotesque normally reserved for John Waters movies, the stocky bi-polar mall cop at least comes across as good-hearted... when not racially profiling stall owners and janitors.

Beside Farris's good time girl (she definitely shrugs off her Scary Movie ditz image in a to-laugh-or-not-to-laugh drunken sex scene), Ronnie must contend with a boozy, frisky mother (Weston), twin Chinese co-workers ("One of you dies, God gave me another"), and Liotta's cop, who is not above dumping the delusional brother-of-the-badge wannabe in the toxic part of town.

Leaping from his dogged pursuit of the flasher (the only clue, a polaroid of a tubby midriff and winking member), to a drug fuelled rumble smacking down snotty skateboarders, to Ronnie reimagining himself as a Batman avenger and the mall his Gotham, Observe and Report may be ADD but is never dull.

Audiences unprepared for the hard edges, caustic funnies, and liberal deployment of cuss words will find this journey into the darker regions of Chuckleville simply too inky, and everyone will nervously ponder the dodgy sexual politics and just how cool Rogen and Hill secretly think their creation is.

But, an awkward romance with the protein deficient girl at the coffee stand (Woolfe) sidesteps treacly sentiment, and when the flasher reveals himself for the final time the punchline is a drop dead gob smacker.

Offbeat and violent with laughs that frequently stick in the throat, this isn't Knocked Up but if the idea of Napoleon Dynamite meets First Blood appeals, you'll go home smiling.