Eye Candy #135 - "Observe and Report"

Observe and Report: Not nearly the riotous comedy the previews would have you believe, this film is about as black a comedy as you can get. Seth Rogen is Ronnie, head of security for the Forest Hills Mall. He is overbearing, obnoxious, bipolar, as well as delusional. He is a dumb and bigoted gun nut, his friends are losers, and his mother an alcoholic. He decides to win the girl of his dreams, Brandy (Anna Farris), who works the cosmetics counter in the department store (when she’s not sleeping with everyone in sight), and become a police officer. The only problem being that he’s insane. And when it all starts to fall apart, it degenerates into something resembling “Falling Down” if that movie was written by idiots. Really didn’t know what I had gotten myself into about halfway through. It’s like a Coen Bros. comedy, with fewer funny parts and a lot, I mean A LOT of full frontal male nudity. I laughed more at the absurdity than because it was genuinely funny. But I appreciate ANY movie that works part of Queen’s “Flash Gordon” soundtrack into the mix. There are even a bunch of other comedians in the film (Patton Oswalt, Danny McBridge) and even they aren’t given the opportunity to be funny. Only Collette Wolf, as Nell, the girl who likes Ronnie for who he really is, acquits herself okay. But I may have hit my Rogen threshold. Hey Hollywood, I don’t need to see him in EVERYTHING. Woodchuck sez, “Largely disappointing.”