‘Observe & Report’ Review: Does Jody Hill Need Anger Management?

We’ve already written our pretty definitive thoughts on Jody Hill’s fairly nasty and mostly unpleasant “Observe & Report,”starring Seth Rogen, Anna Faris and Ray Liotta, that comes out this weekend and then we saw Jeffrey Wells’ review which we mostly agreed with, especially the parts about poor execution, which really are egregious throughout. He gives some loose props to the filmmaker for going out on the ledge and says he was expecting a ” ‘comedy’ without laughs that goes in a much darker and twisted direction than any 21st Century laughter has before,” and notes that it deserves small marks for trying to push some boundaries, but ultimately fails.

“Observe and Report is my idea of amateurish, sloppy, and even cowardly crap. I didn’t completely hate it, but I was constantly scowling and seething at Hill’s flaunting of the absurd unreality of it, and I never laughed once. Sorry, but take away the shock value and it’s a deplorably bad film,” he wrote.

And that got us thinking about the film all over again and we started writing a review that goes like this: There’s vulgar smart that’s enjoyable and there’s vulgar dumb that’s puerile and generally mirthless. The former is where the Judd Apatow films and the wickedly raunchy “Bad Santa” fall and so far, Hill’s pictures, well, you can guess where they land.

Hill and his friends (like David Gordon Green) have suggested in recent interviews that the filmmaker could stand to attend some anger management classes or at least use his films as healthy cathartic release to his everyday frustrations (“Jody can break boards, and my legs, easily,” Green told the NYTimes. “I think that comes from a kid that wants to punch something. It’s great to bring that hunger and anger and put it in a healthy place.”)

Bottled rage and bitterness seethes through “Observe & Report,” in an unfunny, unpleasant and worrisome manner and one would not be dismissed if they would be concerned the filmmaker could go postal without his outlet.

The dark, brooding comedy is not without its merits and there are genuinely funny moments, but far too often Seth Rogen’s character crosses the line into genuinely creepy and uncomfortable territory, and we don’t mean in that good way (see the questionable date-rape scene that elicited painful groans from the screening we were at).

“Wrong funny,” can be amazing — see “Borat” and the upcoming “Bruno” which looks amazingly unPC — but in lesser hands that haven’t quite found their way around tone and the exact tenor, they can be
disastrous.

As we’ve said before, Hill is either confused about whether he wants the film to be a comedy or a examination of a seemingly sweet, but genuinely frightening sociopath, and its the failure to aptly convey the identity is what makes both moods feel like half-baked ideas.

We’d give him the benefit of the doubt — we’re big fans of everyone he works with: Rogen, Danny McBride, Anna Faris, basically the entire cast — if it were not for the artless and amateurish feel of the movie that suggests dude could probably stand to make more TV before he ventures out into the feature film world (his debut “The Foot Fist Way,” was an excellent idea stretched past the limits of comedic elasticity).

There’s nothing wrong with outrageous, vile or shocking, if they’re carefully handled and well executed and dare we say a date-rape joke can be funny (no humor should be off limits if it illuminates), but minus a skilled hand, you don’t get Sacha Baron Cohen arch cleverness, you get a filmmaker that’s part Fred Durst with an overestimation of their comedic and cinematic abilities.

Hell, we’re not even asking for whipsmart comedy, hell, even a dumb, enjoyable flick (ala “Revenge Of The Nerds”) would suffice, but too often ‘O&R’ is cringeworthy and facile in a manner that can’t provide even a hearty chuckle. [C].

The music is… marginally funny. The film opens with a telling cover of Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” by the Band which sort of brilliantly foreshadows the delusional self-importance of the main character, but if only the rest of the film were that clever. The end closes to a cover of The Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind,” that is so outrageous it’s undeniably funny, but again, you’re sort of kicking yourself for laughing as it’s just another one of the overdone slo-motion music montages we’ve been hammered over the head with the entire film.

Look for the 25-30 something geek male crowd to really champion this film though. We can just feel it in our bones and there’s something about the way they might relate to it that seems scary.