MAYBE IT'S because most Americans see their movies in shopping centres that film-makers are drawn to stories about security guards at those vast emporia. Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a surprise hit in the US, and Observe and Reportboth have protagonists who are officious but incompetent security guards with exaggerated notions of their power and unrealistic ambitions above their stations.
Paul Blart, though tacky and inane, was entirely inoffensive, whereas writer-director Jody Hill is clearly determined to shock viewers with Observe and Report. The first curveball he throws is casting Seth Rogen against type, defying audience expectations of that beefy actor in another of his dim, gauche and ultimately cuddly screen personae.
Rogan’s Ronnie is a lonely, embittered security guard who lives with his doting alcoholic mother (Celia Weston). He lusts after cosmetics clerk Brandi (Anna Faris), who shows scant interest in him. He laments that he and his colleagues are not allowed to carry guns, and he dreams of being a real cop, but is rejected as unstable. He imagines that he can demonstrate his prowess when he doggedly pursues a flasher who exposes himself to mall customers.
The script lamely alludes to a bipolar condition as an explanation for Ronnie's erratic behaviour while simultaneously revelling in its supposed comic potential. In his immaturity, self-delusion and smouldering aggression, Ronnie suggests an amalgam of the frustrated, unhinged loners Robert De Niro played in The King of Comedyand Taxi Driver.
However, Rogen’s genuinely scary performance is left stranded in a moral vacuum. Some scenes are merely ludicrous, prompting the misassumption that they are fantasies or dream sequences. The tone turns uglier and nastier as the movie reaches what is evidently a date rape scene until Hill backpedals abruptly and unconvincingly.
That compulsion to have it both ways permeates a cynical film that feebly aspires to satire and social commentary, but is calculatedly provocative, sneeringly condescending, bizarrely sentimental and utterly tasteless.
Directed by Jody Hill. Starring Seth Rogen, Anna Faris, Ray Liotta, Michael Peña, Celia Weston 16 cert, gen release, 85 min
