Observe and Report

As excited as I was when I saw the first trailer for Observe and Report, it ended up falling short. Quite short. While the funny parts were indeed funny, everything that happened in between got very boring very quickly. The first 40 minutes to an hour were incredibly repetitious. In the end, this movie definitely did not give me enough laughs to outweigh the monotony.

For those of you who do not know the plot, Seth Rogen plays Ronnie Barnhardt, the head of the security team of a local mall. A very Travis Bickle-esque character, Ronnie is bi-polar, very serious, and just as unstable. He lives with his alcoholic, never sober mom and is in love with the tramp who works at the makeup counter in the mall (Anna Faris). After a man wearing nothing but a trench coat runs around the mall flashing people, Ronnie puts all of his effort and energy in working with Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta) to find and arrest him. That's pretty much it.

If there was one truly redeeming quality of this movie, it was the way it crossed lines. The last 10 minutes or so are just as hilarious as they are disturbing. But that was one of the best aspects of this movie. It made you laugh at things that you shouldn't laugh at. It made you laugh and then feel bad for laughing. I can almost promise you that soon people will be making a big deal about the fact that Ray Liotta calls Seth Rogen a faggot and a retard while yelling at him. I give writer/director Jody Hill a lot of credit for being able to write humor with such balls. The scenes that were funny were definitely laugh out loud funny. Some of which had me absolutely hysterical; unfortunately, these scenes still did not make the rest of the movie any better.

As for the parts between the laugh-filled ones, they sucked. Plain and simple. They were tedious and boring, and in some parts I honestly thought I was going to fall asleep. Even some of the parts that were supposed to be funny just weren't. While some may find it funny to watch two guys say "fuck you" back and forth to each other for three to five minutes, I found it obnoxious. Get it? It's funny because they're using potty language! And they're slowly getting quieter as they talk! OMG LOL!!! Shut up.

Overall, this movie failed to bring the comedy I was hoping it too, but did bring enough laughs to not make it a total failure.

I give Observe and Report a 6 out of 10.