Saying this movie and Paul Blart: Mall Cop should be mentioned in the same breath because they're both ostensibly about rent-a-cops is like comparing Straw Dogs to Babe because they're both set on a farm. The most refreshing thing about this movie is that Warner Bros. let Jody Hill "win all the arm wrestling matches" with regard to content.
Observe and Report is not a movie about a guy who becomes a hero. Rather, it's about a guy who has determined in his own mind that he is a hero, despite all evidence to the contrary. Like Jody Hill's The Foot Fist Way and Eastbound and Down, it made me think about what kids have grown up thinking a "hero" really is in the USA.
Should kids look up to the soccer coach who's probably only there for the community service hours to clear his DUI charge? Should they idolize the date rapist who teaches martial arts in his "dojo" between the gun shop and XXX movie store? These aren't the same guys featured in Hill's other work, but they're very, very similar.
Fred Simmons (Foot Fist) and Kenny Powers (Eastbound), as played by Danny McBride, don't give a shit what anyone believes or thinks is appropriate. Seth Rogen's Ronnie Barnhardt is cut from the same cloth, but what makes him more dangerous than the other two is that he thinks he is the avenging angel of justice.
What interests me most about Hill's trio of Alpha Jerks is that he doesn't condone what they do or who they are, and at once, he didn't create them as stock antagonists. When you spend enough time with them, it's like you've been with a cult for a while, and they start making a fair amount of sense.
Then, something bizarre or grotesque happens and you snap out of it. If anything, Jody's cracked open a big can of anthropological social commentary disguised as a 16oz Miller Lite.
Ronnie (Seth Rogen) and shopgirl love interest Brandy (Anna Faris) have such repellant personalities that you wouldn't wish either of them on your worst enemy. His best friend, mom, allies and adversaries are all just as disgusting of creatures. They're great to laugh at, but they are frighteningly close to a bunch of the idiots surrounding us all.
The modern American mall is the unholy torture shrine where all these miserable people in nowhere towns like the one in O&R congregate to be miserable together. Hill starts us out in hell and we never leave.
I agree for the most part with Joe Leydon's Taxi Driver comparison. Both guys are seriously screwed up bipolar types who lamentably have jobs that require them to interact with the general public. They're both obsessed with the delusion of an imaginary, "muy macho" version of themselves that wields a great deal of power, but Ronnie comes out more sympathetic than Travis Bickle by a sliver.
That isn't to say Hill cops out and turns Ronnie around. He's still a fucked-up, gun-obsessed idiot. Just when you think he's going to do the right thing, he takes another left turn every chance he gets.
I have a feeling there are things they may have selectively sliced out of the theatrical cut. They'll probably add whatever it was back in to an even more depraved Unrated Cut a few months from now for DVD/Blu-ray. As I understand it, there was a grittier, darker original cut of The Foot Fist Way. It would be nice to see that made available at the same time.
Observe and Report is further evidence that Warners is interested in producing non-homogenized product that conventional studio thinking would never, ever greenlight. It's nice to know that studios are taking chances on guys like Hill, whose striking, original voices are a welcome change from business as usual.