Rating: 1/5 stars

WARNING: Observe and Report is not your typical Seth Rogen comedy, despite how much the marketing may give that impression. This is something new for viewers accustomed to Apatow-style adult comedies, and Warner Brothers should be commended for taking such a huge risk with on an atypical script. Unfortunately, the final product isn’t worth the effort.

Rogen plays Ronnie Barnhardt, a mall cop who suffers from bi-polar disorder and dreams of becoming a police officer. When a flasher begins systematically exposing himself to customers, he makes it his sole mission to find the perpetrator and bring him to justice.

Director Jody Hill has stated that he drew on the classic Scorsese film Taxi Driver as inspiration, and the influence is obvious. Ronnie is just as delusional a protagonist as Travis Bickle, if not moreso. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that he’s mentally unhinged, a barrel of dynamite just waiting to explode. Not only does Ronnie suffer from bi-polar disorder, but he also harbors extreme delusions of grandeur. He views himself as the lone hero standing up against not just the flasher himself, but the incompetent police force that allows him to exist. It doesn’t help matters that he also has an unhealthy fascination with firearms.

While this would make for a fascinating character study in a more dramatic film, the dark subject matter doesn’t mesh very well with the raunchy comedy Hill tries to inject it with. Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but it seems morally repugnant to me to create a character who is mentally unstable, engages in murder and date rape, and assaults police officers, and expect people to laugh at it. The problem with Observe and Report isn’t its protagonist, warts and all. The problem is that Ronnie isn’t presented as someone to be pitied or looked upon as deranged, he’s portrayed as someone to be admired and respected. The audience becomes drawn into Ronnie’s own delusions about himself, and that is what makes Observe and Report such a deplorable film.

That isn’t to say it’s an atrocious piece of filmmaking. Michael Pena gives one of the best performances of his career as a fellow mall cop, even managing to steal every scene he’s in from Rogen. The cinematography is engaging, the pacing is effective and the gags are (usually) hilarious. It’s just too bad I felt guilty for laughing at so many of them.

There is a part of me that wants to think Hill and company have created a brilliant piece of genre subversion, and done to comedy what Funny Games did to horror. But in the end it’s difficult to view Observe and Report as anything more than a dark comedy that pushes things too far. There are too few prompts for audience reflection, and too many instances when the full implications of Ronnie’s actions are brushed aside in the name of another laugh.

It takes a lot to offend me, and I can appreciate dark comedy. But while Observe and Report is a breath of originality in a sea of formulaic comedies, it’s also the most amoral movie I’ve seen in months. Violence and insanity have been used to inspire laughter in comedies before, but hardly ever have they presented as so morally unambiguous. Maybe this is an intelligent satire of comedy conventions, but if so, the point is difficult to grasp. And I simply can’t recommend any film that simultaneously offends me and makes me feel stupid for not understanding why I’m being offended.