How do I start this?
Jody Hill… save your money.
The clock is ticking on this spectacularly overrated writer/director. He just got a second season pick-up for the mediocre Eastbound & Down. Observe & Report is coming out with some love from the people who so want to love this guy’s style of hateful, white-trash-mocking humor.
And unless he shows an enormous amount of growth – which is unlikely for writer/directors who are told they are geniuses when they are just kinda okay at best – he will be a movie business memory by 2012.
Observe & Report is, after all the hype, Paul Blart: Mall Cop with less storytelling skill and a lot of “fucks,” cocks, implants (bobs and lips) and drug/alcohol abuse. Hill has the advantage of having some taste in actors. Seth Rogen shows that he really is capable of carrying a movie… but is not asked to do much more than to be a pudgy face and to read lines in his familiar rhythms. The highlight of the film, for me, is Michael Pena as an indescribably ambivalent Hispanic all cop with a Mike Tyson speech impediment who is teamed with Rogen’s Ronnie Barnhardt. He is just funny and really commits to the character.
The toughest acting work comes for the actresses, who Hill seems to think can be misogynized or mocked as slutty old drunks only to be redeemed by one ”good girl.” He didn’t watch The Farrellys closely enough.
But back to the movie itself…
It’s not funny.
I laughed out loud once during the entire film. The audience I saw it with laughed out loud twice… the second time when someone was shot with a gun. Hee hee.
I’m sure Mr. Hill is a great guy and it seems that talent is ready to work with him. His humor reminds me a bit of Dane Cook… if it’s not funny, make it loud and use the word “***” and at least you will get their attention.
The problem with the movie is not that it is severe… because in truth, it is not nearly as severe as some of the smarter comedy out there. This guy has nothing on Bruce, Carlin or Pryor's sense of truth-telling. It is that it lies… mostly to itself. Gags have a shelf-life of minutes… sometimes less. Whatever might get a laugh. But who are these people?
When I read the pathetically self-congratulatory argument from this director that this film is inspired somehow by Taxi Driver, it all makes sense. He doesn’t understand or have any interest in Taxi Driver. He understands and is interested in a guy looking in the mirror saying, “You talkin’ to me?,” and even more so, people imitating DeNiro saying that phrase. That is his cultural touchstone… not the film and what it was about, but the decades of people getting instant gratification with a reference to a line that has become less than the whole of that film.
I would be curious to know how many people recognize – or even hear – Hill’s reference to Miller’s Crossing during the movie. It perked me up. It got me rooting for the guy. How bad could he be if he made a Miller’s Crossing joke in this middle of this simplistic comedy? But he soon lost me again.
After a while, I just kept thinking that this was a movie about grown men who play with their own poop and think it is the funniest thing in the world. And that is about all that the movie will commit to. Ronnie Barnhardt isn’t really a loser. He’s a guy who, if he stayed on his meds, might be a real success. Of course, the movie throws out the idea that he is both on meds and that he stops taking them in a matter of a minute, about halfway through the film. Bam. There it is. But even that left field shot doesn’t actually go anywhere. The story suggests he is driven to extremes by circumstance, not psychosis. So why throw in the meds issue? And if it matters, why doesn’t he really go nuts?
Over and over, that is the story of this film. Hill sets up the situation and then drops the ball completely, looking quickly for the next set-up to raise and abandon. This is true of both the biggest and smallest plot points. What is his relationship with becoming a “real” policeman? What is the post-first-date relationship with The Girl? What does this guy do all day?
One of the moments that struck me, in particular, was Ronnie’s mother – the sadly abused, always excellent actress Celia Weston – struggling to put booze in a soda bottle. It is a somewhat subtle, insightful, and intriguing bit. It is one of the things that alcoholics who want to maintain the pretense that they are not really drinking often do. But she is not a booze hider. Her words are relentlessly honest and direct about herself and what she feels to be true.
So which one is it? You want to make the argument that “real life” is both, sometimes at the same time? Okay. But as drama goes, I consider that a complete cop out. Who is Ronnie and what does his life with his mother mean? Is he still living with her because he really is a loser or because he is being responsible for a woman who can’t take care of herself? Has she been shielding him from him limitations for all these years?
I am sure that some people will wonder, “why are you taking this silly comedy so seriously?” Well, that is the thing of all drama, serious or comedic, austere or frivolous. The reason that most of the Apatow films and the early Farrelly films work so well is that there is that core of truth. You forgive their lead characters everything and root for them no matter how ugly their behaviors. Even if absurdity, they are humans with recognizable wants and needs.
Is date rape funny? Does a girl waking up long enough to tell the guy to keep pumping away make it okay to laugh at a date rape? But let’s go past that scene… when the same woman establishes, as she really did even before the date rape scene, that she has no boundaries in her sexual choices aside from who brings the drugs, alcohol or power, is it funny for one of those who used her to treat her like a whore?
The difference between Apatow and The Farrellys and Hill is that the first two understand that The Guy has to learn something in order for his former bad behavior to be something other than hateful.
Of course, there are a load of other silly mistakes in judgment in the film by the filmmaker. Anyone who shows themselves to have the skills that Ronnie occasionally shows would be valued differently than he is in the film. The flips between romantic notions and opportunism would make Nadia Comaneci queasy. The whole “real gun” obsession plays like a neo-Nazi porn video. And the music… oy. I have quoted a great composer before, commenting that the fewer music cues a film has, the better the film. This film is so wall-to-wall with music that one has to wonder if Mr. Hill trusted anything he put on film to connect with audiences without a loud, pounding cue.
I guess it is easy to overstate just how bad this movie is. But honestly, when you get halfway through a film like this and sincerely feel that Paul Blart is a better made, more clearly thought out, simply enjoyable piece of crap… well, that is a pretty low standard to challenge.
I really like watching Rogen. I feel as though Anna Faris has destroyed her future career with the *** implants and lip collagen – though this is her second of three studio leads since she pumped up... studio jobs she wasn't getting before with a push-up bra and perky charm – and I miss the lovable girl she used to be every time I watch her work now, talented though she still is. These two and Pena and Weston made the experience of watching this quite frustrating. That and that the ideas here could well have made a really interesting, quirky comedy. But they just didn’t.
Finally, I am beginning to think that the need that some of these comedy directors have lately to show penises flopping about is another show of a sad immaturity in these men. Part of me says, “Who cares?” But part of me says,” If it doesn’t matter and you did it, you have failed utterly.”
I would argue that the “turnabout” argument made by some women is inaccurate, as the analogous body part to the make penis is not the ***, but the labia… and when is the last time you saw labia in a studio movie? How impotent do you have to be to feel compelled to put male genitalia on display to get a laugh? And how immature is the laugh you get? Just wondering…
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2009/04/review_observe.html