by Scott Jentsch

Sep 28, 2009

Humor is subjective. What's funny to some is not funny to others.

The trailer for this movie does a very poor job of explaining just how dark the humor in this movie is going to be. Just when you thought it couldn't go any further down that road, it steps on the gas and swerves into the cornfield of oddness.

I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to movies, and I can appreciate a movie for what it is trying to do, even if I don't care for what it's actually doing. Observe and Report, however, takes a mall cop movie and combines it with a level of oddness in several different directions that the end result is more of a mess than anything else. Maybe I just failed to appreciate it on its own level, but after reading several other reviews, I'm not alone in my regard for this movie.

If they could have presented Ronnie Barnhardt as a sympathetic character, I could probably have bought into it a little more. However, instead of us sympathizing with him, the audience is left shaking their heads as to why he's doing what is being seen. Several reviews have remarked about the post-dinner scene at Brandi's house as being an example of how dark the movie is, but I found that at least to be in character for both Ronnie and Brandi. Contrast that to the climactic scene between Ronnie and Detective Harrison, which is just sad to have to watch on the screen as it happens.

If this is Seth Rogen's idea of where comedies should go, he can go there alone. Maybe he can pick up Adam Sandler on the way, because he's close to joining the latter on my "to avoid" list as a result of this movie. Maybe he just had to go too far to know where the line was, but hopefully he realizes that the line between raunchy-funny and raunchy-bad was in the rear view mirror of that golf cart he was driving. 

by George Jobson

Mar 20, 2010

Not much of a comedy. "Observe and Report" is a lame comedy about a security guard played by Seth Rogan who guards a mall from bad people and mean customers, while dreaming of becoming a police officer. There's not much I like, the mall isn't anything new. They probaby don't have a movie theatre; but they should. And the biggest theat to the mall is a flasher who exposes himself to women.