Observe and Report

Midway through the movie Seth Rogen is called into the detective's office to be told that he has failed the pyschological profile and will not be admitted to the police academy. Another officer hides in the closet to overhear Seth get what's coming to him. As Seth is delivered the news his confusion, diappointment and hurt are painful to watch. The officer steps out of the closet and sheepishly excuses himself, "I'm sorry. I thought this was going to be funny, but it's just sad."

This is a wink from writer-director Jody Hill, letting you know that he knows exactly what he is doing when he manipulates audience expectations. We tend to expect our movies to observe certain rules about the tone of the story: How the tone is allowed to change and what sorts of things are allowed to happen once the tone is established. People who don't like to see their rules broken and mocked will not like this movie. Hill is a merry prankster, and the joke is on you. Once you get it, the experience becomes a thrill ride as the flick wickedly shifts from lighthearted to grave, from irresponsible to moralistic, from palatable to tasteless, from sober reality to cartoonish fantasy and then back again. The pleasure in his movies is to recognize your own instinctual reactions to the material, to see how transparently your moral compass and logical circuitry operate. In a way, the best part of the feature would be to see someone walk out of the theater in disgust. There is an element of perversity in this filmmaking approach, and it can certainly be taken too far in the direction of exploitation, but Hill finds the right balance by showing us reprehensible assholes who are nevertheless deeply sympathetic, wounded and believable individuals. But they're still assholes.

If Observe and Report has a flaw it is the underuse of Patton Oswalt. Most movies have this flaw. Anna Faris shares the supporing female part with the chipmunk-adorable Collette Wolfe, who is too pretty for her role but who cares. Faris deservingly gets the movie's funniest line, in the scene around which the (transparent) media is stirring fake controversy.