Observe and Report

Review By: Tom Herrmann
TomHerrmann@TheCinemaSource.com

Movie Grade: D
DVD Features Grade: D
Overall Grade: D

Seth Rogen has put himself in a number of favorable roles throughout his acting career. Starting with the popular TV series Freaks and Geeks, which was produced by Judd Apatow, and eventually finding film exposure in Apatow’s movies. Rogen has had supporting parts in hilarious comedies such as The 40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad, and has had leading roles in Knocked Up and Funny People. These past few years have been very god to Rogen’s portfolio, which is what makes a movie like Observe and Report all the more sad to watch.

If this review were based solely on the trailer for the film, this synopsis would be surprisingly different. The trailer would make someone believe that the film follows Ronnie (Seth Rogen) as he attempts to catch a pervert who has been flashing people at the mall and trying to get some action from the incredibly annoying Brandi (Anna Farris). These are definitely key points in the film, but it revolved more around Ronnie’s bizarre desire for a police-like authority that teeters on unhealthy and delusional. It seems almost as if the whole pervert and Brandi storylines were going to be the main focus but sometime during production everyone forgot what they were doing and started to trail off in irrelevant directions.

This lack of focus comes into play again when it comes to dialog. The humor of the film seemed to have sense of… well anything. There was nothing to it aside from cliché crude humor. Anna Farris saying that tequila shots “burn so good,” isn’t funny. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could find that funny. Since Seth Rogen had a part in this, there had to be the expected Judd Apatow style conversational humor; the only real reason there was any hope for this movie. Contrary to the norm, Rogen’s lines aren’t the usual “laugh-out-loud” kind of jokes and more of the “who wrote this garbage” kind. Seeing one of my personal favorite comedic actors like this was exactly what I was trying to avoid by not seeing the theatrical release in the first place.

There is a lot of humor that wasn’t expected at all though. Physical humor that consisted of a brutal montage of security guards beating up skate boarding teens, doing lines of cocaine, and a number of other questionable things that were all just too much to handle for one film. Too much to handle might be the best way to describe everything about this film when you get down to it. The characters were too much to handle because they were all so obnoxious, and lacked the depth and complexity that would make this tolerable; the humor was too much because it was far too abrupt and had no apparent rhyme or reason; and the story was too much because it was about catching a pervert, getting with Anna ...