REVIEW: OBSERVE AND REPORT

You don't know Seth Rogen. You think you know Seth Rogen, and for the first half hour or so of Observe and Report you're going to be seeing his character, Ronnie Barnhardt, through the prism of the Rogen from Knocked Up or Freaks and Geeks or Pineapple Express. And then there's going to come a scene where you think you know the comedy aspect of it - a blustering fool laid low when faced with reality - and writer/director Jody Hill will completely surprise you and you'll say, 'I didn't know Seth Rogen.'

Don't feel bad. I walked in to Observe and Report knowing full well what to expect and even I was taken by surprise in this scene (which I'll discuss later, in a post spoiler warning section). And it wasn't just Seth Rogen who surprised me. It turns out I also didn't know Jody Hill.

I first heard of Hill last year, when I got my hands on a DVD screener of The Foot Fist Way, the movie that brought Danny McBride to the attention of people like Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. Hill, McBride and third collaborator Ben Best got together again to make the excellent HBO series Eastbound and Down (which has just been confirmed for a second season); Observe and Report marks Hill striking off on his own (although McBride has a cameo), and it also marks Hill going places that make his previous work look like light hearted comedy. In comparison to Ronnie Barnhardt, Fred Simmons and Kenny Powers look like Ernest P Worrell.

Well, maybe not Ernest, but Ronnie is an almost astonishingly dark character. Made up of delusions and festering anger, Ronnie couldn't be farther from the jolly fat slacker in which Rogen has previously specialized. And it's almost confusing at first, because your instinct as a viewer is that Ronnie's a joke. He's a doughy slob working security at a shitty mall, taking his job way too seriously and obviously too full of himself. The joke of Ronnie is a familiar one, and it seems like you can see where it's all going: Ronnie will have to face reality and will be found wanting, and will then find humility or whatever and redeem himself. Except that's not the joke. The joke is on us. Ronnie's capable. Deadly capable.

That's something Hill seems to gravitate towards. Fred Simmons seemed like a joke, but in the end he truly was the King of the Demo, and he never learned any lessons. Kenny Powers actually started out as someone capable, but in the end proved that he still was. And now Ronnie. A Will Ferrell take on these characters would be like Anchorman, where the character is blazingly full of himself but nothing else; the hilarity comes from seeing the unfounded, unearned hubris get punctured. But Hill's characters, especially Ronnie, come from the other end of the spectrum. No one takes them seriously (including us) until they suddenly and spectacularly prove themselves.

Ronnie's moment comes when his mall is suddenly the nexus of a series of flashings. When internal security can't get the pervert, the real police are called in. Ronnie butts heads with the detective on the case (Ray Liotta), but this isn't some kind of buddy movie. Liotta's there to be an occasional foil and accelerant to Ronnie's growing delusion, as is Brandi, the slutty make up counter party girl whom Ronnie loves. They're parts of the path that Ronnie takes towards a meltdown that is so spectacular that it brings Observe and Report from the realm of really good movies straight into the realm of brilliance.

Yeah, the B word. If you skip to the end you'll see that I've given this movie a 10/10 score. That's not to say it's flawless; there are a couple of scenes that felt rushed, and once or twice Hill loses his reality-based comedy aesthetic to get a little schticky (an extended 'fuck you' back and forth between Ronnie and Aziz Ansari's sleazy body oil salesman Saddamn, for instance, or a drug montage that, while funny, breaks reality in favor of a joke already done in Wet Hot American Summer). But it's hard for me to think of any work of art that I would find flawless as a whole, and just because a movie has flaws doesn't mean it isn't perfect. Observe and Report is perfect; it's dark and strange and dances right on the edge of being completely mean and unfriendly, but manages to keep from tumbling over. It's hilarious and it's unsettling. It's a movie that will make many people feel bad; they'll be confused or they'll be upset by the ending in ways they don't quite understand. It's fucking amazing.

So what about that ending? Mild spoilers follow:

It's Taxi Driver. What Hill has done here is take the basics of Taxi Driver and made it a comedy. This isn't unprecedented - Scorsese himself did it with King of Comedy, which is at the very least a 'spiritual sequel' (as Richard Linklater might say) to Taxi Driver, and which is a movie that Hill uses as a touchstone for Observe and Report - but it's ballsy. And the comparisons to Taxi Driver follow all the way through to the very end, to a sequence that many people seem determined to read as a fantasy. But reading the end of the film as a fantasy robs it completely of all meaning, and is essentially taking away the punchline of the joke Hill has been building towards for two hours. Yes, Ronnie does do those things. And yes, he is celebrated for it - for doing exactly what everybody thought he was crazy for wanting to do, for doing what keeps him out of the police academy.

He wasn't just capable, which he proved when he beat the shit out of a passel of drug dealers, he was right.

Spoilers are over.

I've found myself more and more fascinated by tone in movies lately. Once upon a time tone wasn't that big a deal to me, and I could groove on a film whose tone was all over the place. But as my movie watching palette continues to mature, I find myself gravitating towards films that play tone like Django Reinhardt played guitar. I love movies where seemingly opposite tones exist in harmony, where the director precariously balances these tones and makes them work. I'm less interested in a straight comedy these days, and I find myself drawn to funny movies that include manifestly unfunny scenarios. Observe and Report really fits into that; the film is the story of Ronnie's massive, violent nervous breakdown, and taken from any other perspective would have been a dark, moody piece. But Hill, proving himself am incredible filmmaker, makes his take work.

Hill's not alone. Rogen obviously makes the entire movie work. The scene with the drug dealers is played perfectly, as is one where he's telling his sociopathic fantasies to a police psychiatrist. Rogen has an innate likability that does sort of mask the depths of Ronnie's darkness at first, but that's why he's a great choice. You wouldn't be surprised when Danny McBride goes the places Rogen goes at the end. Anna Farris also proves that she just needs the right material; a naturally funny actor she has the chops and willingness to go uncomfortable, non-mainstream places. I wish somebody could get her out of movies made for mall crowds and into more films like this.

Michael Pena is probably best known for his dramatic work in films like Crash and World Trade Center, but here he proves he has serious comedic skills. At first I wasn't that into his character, Dennis, who is Ronnie's right hand man on the security team. But eventual revelations and twists add layers to early scenes, and Dennis ends up coming quite close to stealing the entire movie.

How will Hill top Observe and Report? It's hard to imagine he'll be able to do so within the studio system; this movie reminds me a lot of Watchmen: Warner Bros movies that are shockingly daring, involve surprise compound fractures and have lengthy scenes featuring male genitalia. Will it also hit - or rather fail to hit - like Watchmen? Will Observe and Report prove that Paul Blart Mall Cop is what Americans want out of their comedies? Safety, blandness, idiocy? The important thing, I guess, is that he got this one through. This is classic smuggling: taking a buzzed about filmmaker and a very popular, mainstream star and teaming them up to make something uncompromising, strange, uncomfortable and dark.

Observe and Report is an amazing movie... for the right audience. I'm not dumb enough to think that this movie is for everyone; there will be people who simply won't understand why other folks are so desperately in love with it. There will be people who don't quite see why many of the jokes are funny (such as the ending - shocking, violent, sick and in my opinion one of the funniest things I've seen in a movie in years), and who wonder how anybody can stomach these characters. But if you're that special kind of viewer, the kind who likes to be challenged, who likes to go places sane people avoid, who thinks transgression isn't just desirable but also kind of hilarious, Observe and Report might be your favorite movie of the year.