Observe and Report

Observe and Report has about four or five truly funny moments in its short 86-minute running time. Now, if the scenes in between those four or five moments weren't so terribly off in terms of tone and coherence, I'd gladly give the film a positive review, citing those four or five amusing instances as well worth paying to go see the film. This is a film that tries way too hard to have its humor be as black as possible, and in doing so, it fails considerably, never even coming close to Borat-caliber satire (though the upside to this is that the general mediocrity of Observe and Report makes me look forward to Bruno even more - I doubt Sacha Baron Cohen will let us down).

Seth Rogen deserves credit for holding his own despite the fact that the script gives him a thoroughly unlikable protagonist to work with, and it'd be hard to argue that the reason why he comes off unscathed isn't because he's proven himself to be an excellent comedic actor in so many other projects. The remainder of the cast isn't so lucky: Anna Faris is usually very effective with her over-the-top shtick, but she can't do much to save the truly detestable character she plays, and supporting performances by Ray Liotta and Michael Pena are equally unimpressive.

What's worse is that those four or five amusing moments that the film does have are all pretty much scattered within the first half of the film, which means that we're forced to deal with a yawn-inducing second half in which the film makes its worst misstep: it tries to mock action/superhero films in which the main character suddenly becomes really badass and we start hearing determined voiceovers ("I know what I must become," yada-yada-yada) by having Rogen's character do the same sort of thing, yet it's handled very poorly, not managing to elicit a single chuckle. I think that the problem is that, ultimately, when you're going to satirize something, you need to have a really clear approach and your arrows have to be pretty sharp, so a movie that has such a weird tone, that is so awkwardly paced, and that never makes it very clear who or what is being satirized, is bound to fail in this department. Unfortunately, there's not much comedic quality to report here.

4/10