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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Travis Bickle: Mall Cop, 2 May 2009
This is comedy in the darkest shade of black. Observe And Report observes and reports on the life of the tragically flawed character that is Ronnie Barnhardt, from the minute his mall becomes the target of a flasher operating in the car park. Ronnie leaps into action when the flasher targets the subject of his wildest dreams - trashy mall beautician Brandi - which also marks the beginning of his feud with Detective Harrison, sent out to deal with the situation.
Seth Rogen, familiar to many from his shlubby lovable loser characters in Judd Apatow's films, swings completely to the dark side in this role as bipolar Ronnie, which is probably his finest performance so far. He continues to carry out his mall duties obsessively, dealing out his own brand of justice, as he spars with Ray Liotta's Harrison - Harrison just wants to do his job, but is gradually driven to despair by Ronnie's continual ignorance, nuisance, and presence. Michael Peña is particularly hilarious as Dennis, Ronnie's 'right hand man' in mall security, and his performance is perhaps the only one you don't feel dirty inside for laughing at.
Be aware that this is definitely NOT a family movie though - it's not too graphic, apart from a prolonged section of full-frontal male nudity, though the themes in this film are more mature than plenty of 18 certificates I can think of. For instance, besides Ronnie's delusional nature, and often terrifying behaviour, there's some flat-out racism, date rape, and armed adults jumping and beating up teenagers.
This is a very funny film, though most of the time it's a slim choice between laughing and crying. Equally though, it is a great study of Ronnie's character, even if many of the things you see you may not want to remember!
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10 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not that great and far inferior to Mall Cop, 4 Aug 2009
When I got to the end of watching OBSERVE & REPORT, I let out a massive sigh of relief as it really was such a struggle to get through. With a combination of a very thin amount of jokes (most of which were not at all funny, in bad taste and pretty unoriginal), a next-to non-existent plot which has Seth Rogen as Ronnie, the head of security at the Forest Ridge Mall who is on the lookout for a flasher who has been terrorising the staff and shoppers, as well as trying to get into the police force, this just failed to be anything but less than average at best which is a shame as lead actors Rogen and Ray Liotta are usually great in most of the films that they appear in. This however was well below the standard I'd expect from them, which is surprising as Rogen is one of the best known actors in comedy at the moment, being in recent successful films like SUPERBAD, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS and KNOCKED UP.
There were a couple of funny moments but for just a handful of laughs, this isn't really worth the time or money on seeing as it is generally pretty rubbish. There's obvious comparisons to the excellent PAUL BLART: MALL COP and in all honesty, that film is better than this in pretty much every way possible, so I'd watch that instead.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Only for massive Seth Rogen fans, 20 Aug 2009
I gave this 3 stars because I couldn't give it 2 and a 1/2. This film does have its funny parts but unsuccessfully attempts to be both dark and feel good. It just doesn't work. It's great that Seth Rogen is trying a role where he isn't playing the lovable-jolly-bum-around-guy again but some actors just fit certain roles perfectly and that's his. The plot does let him down because I think he has a lot of potential and is lining up to be the next Hollywood copmedy giant. In truth the plot lets him down. The idea of a bi-polar mall security guard with grandiose delusions had some promise (there are some great scenes between Rogen and Liotta) but none of it works. Michael Pena and Anna Faris bring the majority of laughs. I am a huge fan of Seth Rogen and go to watch all of his films at the cinema but this one is really only for big, big fans. p.s. don't expect anything nearly as funny as Knocked Up or Superbad.
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