Release Date: April 10
Director: Jody Hill
Writer: Jody Hill
Cinematographer: Tim Orr
Starring: Seth Rogen, Ray
Liotta, Michael Peña, Anna Faris
Second-rate Taxi Driver
Calling Observe and Report a
comedic variation of Taxi Driver is half right. Jody Hill’s
new movie about a mall security guard with delusions of grandeur does
follow the plot and structure of Scorsese’s stylish 1976 portrait
of an unstable cabbie. But the comparison misses the fact that Taxi
Driver is itself pretty funny, by design. All of its looming and
actual bursts of violence are dripping with irony, and the dangerous
naiveté of the eponymous taxi driver, Travis Bickle, is the
source of many of the film’s jokes, unsettling though they may be.
The marginalized individual at the
center of Observe and Report is Ronnie Barnhardt, played by
Seth Rogen. Although he tries to project macho competence as he walks
the mall floor, he’s ill equipped to deal with the most pressing
security issues: a flasher who is terrorizing female shoppers and a
burglar who rips the place off at night. Worse than the actual
perpetrators, in Ronnie’s eyes, is a detective played by Ray
Liotta. When actual police like him appear, they inadvertently rub
Ronnie’s nose in his meager rank.
Observe and Report feels like a
leap beyond Hill’s first film, The Foot Fist Way, a minor
comedy about a self-aggrandizing tae kwon do instructor, but the
difference this time is one of ambition more than ability. He’s
reaching higher, but his storytelling is as episodic and disjointed
as ever. In the film’s first reel we see Ronnie going about his
day, but it’s hard to tell how the scenes are stitched together in
time. We never have a sense of what anyone is doing when they’re
not on the screen, and even when they are it’s hard to know why
they’re doing what they’re doing. Why does Liotta’s cop get so
enraged by a mall security guard? Why does Brandi, a make-up counter
employee played by Anna Faris, roll her eyes at Ronnie one day and go
on a date with him the next?
Hill recognizes the need for logic—the
detective says Ronnie is messing up his investigation and Brandi
knows that a date with Ronnie means free booze—but those character
details are unconvincing. Brandi in particular is so chaotic and
underwritten that even Faris, who often shines in such roles, can’t
seem to get a handle on a bored glam girl who’s strangely terrified
by a pudgy man in a raincoat.
Observe and Report also feels
like a leap simply because Hill has more tools at his disposal, such
as ace cinematographer Tim Orr and a larger budget for music
clearances. But the songs are a seductive curse; the film’s mood
relies heavily on a taste for eclectic power rock that can’t be
attributed to any of the characters. And while the actors—especially
Michael Peña as Ronnie’s right-hand man—generally seem to
have fun with their oddball roles, they need Rogen as an anchor. He
gives a fine performance, but the affable, under-achieving lug that
he’s played in a dozen other films hangs over this one,
undercutting the need for boiling instability.
In truth, even Taxi Driver has
its flaws. Why Cybill Shepherd’s character is dumb enough to walk
into a porn theater with Bickle is anyone’s guess, and that’s
partly why I prefer Scorsese’s King of Comedy. That film,
too, has been called a comedic variation of Taxi Driver, but
it’s at least as serious as its forerunner. It also deviously
allows the main character to offer reasons for his actions, but those
dubious explanations raise even more questions.
By contrast, Hill seems to believe that
Ronnie’s psychology is pretty easy to unpack. He was born with
difficulties. He was raised without a father. He lives with a caring
but drunken mother, the film’s own detour from the unseen mother in
The King of Comedy (which Scorsese probably borrowed from
Psycho). Hill tries to allude to unseen details, like early
childhood problems, but he either hasn’t imagined them or can’t
evoke them. If Hill shows promise as a filmmaker it’s because he
consistently wants his characters to exist beyond the story’s
boundaries. But, so far, he hasn’t been able to come up with any
that do.