OBSERVE & REPORT POST-Release discussion

Yeah, I thought I knew what to expect, but this thing totally surprised me at least two or three times.

I had fun watching it. Not sure how many times I'd watch it, but it was an entertaining experience.

I liked it a great deal. It's going to turn off a lot of folks expecting Superbad Goes To The Mall.

The whole cast is great, but Michael Pena is the MVP.

Missed it due to reasons of North Carolina. Hearing very mixed reports.

So far, sounds more like "post-release" discussion.

From everything I'm hearing, sounds like the "great unwashed" are going to be a little miffed with their curious new Rogen film.

I think this is definitely going to be the case. A second straight weekend of confused/surprised comedy-goers in America's multiplexes.

This is all ambiguous.

Just to clarify, I wasn't upset about spoilers or anything. Just thought maybe they accidentally mislabeled it.

I know it's a post-release thread, but SPOILERS below...

I've seen the film twice now and talked to Jeremy Smith and Jody Hill about it (albeit through a college conference call, but I got the information I wanted from him), but this question of whether or not there is a rupture of subjectivity is what I think makes the film so interesting. I was once firmly on the side of the fence that feels it was subjective, but now I'm not quite so sure.

The first time I saw it, I didn’t quite realize it was possibly subjective until the end. I just took it for granted that it was a comedy, a genre which tends to operate in a kind of alternate universe where people get away with stuff that wouldn’t pass in real life. This is particularly true of Ronnie throughout the film, most notably in the final scene with him chasing and shooting the pervert in the mall, all set to the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” This is then followed by Ronnie getting his job back, and it quickly becomes clear that it’s wish fulfillment on his part, just a dream sequence. But what about the rest of the film? What's real and what's fake?

Now Hill has said that he doesn't personally have an interpretation of the film, what you take from it and grapple with is yours. Seth Rogen has called the film more of a portrait of someone who is mentally ill than a look into the life of a mall cop. However, Jeremy Smith told me an early draft of the script was completely different, to the point where Ronnie's physical training is made more explicit (lending more credence to his ability to beat up those thugs) and where he only beats up the pervert at the end of the film.

Still though, it's a slippery slope. The film seems to be working in subjective terms before Ronnie stops taking his meds (like when he beats the thugs up), while he's off them (seeing Brandi fuck Det. Harrison in the car, Dennis and Ronnie's drug montage, the Oldboy homage), and when he's back on meds (final sequence). But who knows? Are these scenes complete fantasy or are they just exaggerations of reality? The film never explicitly spells it out for you, which I think is a really interesting choice, and what elevates it into a masterpiece.

I know the film has been getting a lot of comments about its similarities to Taxi Driver (and the ending is beat-for-beat pretty similar), but I feel like its kindred spirit is The King of Comedy. My favorite bit on film subjectivity is Scorsese's commentary on the Criterion DVD of Black Narcissus, where he states that Michael Powell's films influenced The King of Comedy in its conception of fantasy. Scorsese says that Powell treats fantasy and reality the same way, in fact, he makes the fantasy as realistic as possible. Scorsese goes on to state that Rupert Pupkin is so enamored by his fantasies that he is incapable of separating fantasy from reality. And so Scorsese shot the film in a way that the "fantasy is more real than reality".

Just something to chew on.

This movie is the fucking tits. When the Oldboy scene happens and it's scored to Flash Gordon music I died. But from the opening credit sequence, the film tells you what it is. There's a lot of Zwigoff-level contempt here, but Rogen makes his buffoon so affable that you love him. Boom. Pena does sort of walk away with the movie as everything he does is great, but I don't know if the film sets up the first half as so realistic that when Rogen kicks ass it's a different movie. You just didn't know he could do that, but the film - in the opening sequence - has him shooting bulleyes, so I don't know how that's a swap out. He's psychotic, yes, but his physical competence is his saving grace as a character.

Plus the date, plus him going Goodfellas on Patton, plus everything Michael Pena, plus everything Aziz, plus the cloest scene, plus the mom, plus etc. This is a harsh movie, but funny is funny,

I don't think it's unrealistic. There's nothing that says Ronnie COULDN'T do what he did with the crack dealers, you just assume that you know what kind of a movie you're watching when you actually don't.

You think Ronnie's a joke, and he is, but it's a very different joke than what you expect. A much darker joke.

I agree. I think. You just didn't know the character could hold his own in a physical confrontation until he was put in that type of situation. The film isn't changing its tone or level of realism. You're discovering something about the character.

Ha. We're on the same page.

You think there definitively IS a shift into Ronnie's fantasy realm in the last few minutes? I think that would certainly explain the world's reaction to what he does, but I don't think there's really any support for that interpretation in the film itself...

The girl he ends up with always liked him, and ending up back in charge of mall security - if your dream was to be a cop - is really pretty sad. The only thing that's changed is that the character has shown people that he's pretty good at what he does, albeit in a spectacularly innapropriate and thoroughly reprehensible way.

No wonder Jody Hill keeps referencing Taxi Driver, people may not want to believe the text.

Ronnie's not healed in a couple of days. It's months. The food court girl is healed, and she said it would take her two months.

Yeah, the idea of it being his fantasy probably comes from the same place where people think Travis Bickle is dying at the end of TAXI DRIVER and the last scenes are in his imagination.

I don't get that. Him kicking ass is unbelievable, but the film opens and ends with him hitting bullseyes with crazy perfection. And so either the whole text is fantasy, or it's the reality, but there is no divergent moment as there might be in something like Lost Highway. You can see Observe and Report as the way that character might relay his life story, but that doesn't take away from the text, as the narrative itself is heightened. But if this is his version of that story, the edges are there to reveal that the outside world doesn't bask in him.

It's the exact ending of TAXI DRIVER.

How does this guy have a job? His mall is constantly being robbed, and he proves his incompetence to his boss when the cops come, but it's the third act that's unbelieveable? Within the reality of the film both the mall manager and Brandi probably believe what Ronnie said about the flasher coming back for Brandi to kill her.

But the divergent fantasy stuff has less bearing on the whole than reading the flasher as an externilization of Ronnie's inner demons, which is a reading that is textual.

Taxi Driver/Pan's Labyrinth, etc.

The other problem with the "off the meds" reading? For the return to the mall he's back on them, which is made evident when his mom gives him a pill.

Being unable to accept aspects of the film makes me think it's about audience members giving themselves permission. Art is by nature not binary.

If the film’s narration is taken to be Ronnie’s subjective perspective than the entire film has to be subjective. It can’t just be the ending, or it doesn’t work. It’s the same idea as Taxi Driver’s ending, as Devin mentioned. Yes both films share the same dénouement, but it’s the content that precedes those endings that drives such divergent interpretations. The problem with people calling the end of Taxi Driver a dream sequence is that absolutely nothing else in that film can really be construed as fantasy. However, Observe and Report almost basks in this rupture of reality.

If Observe and Report is subjective, and I’m not entirely sure it is, though for now I will argue on that side, it presents only a SKEWED form of reality. It's narrative is filtered through Ronnie's POV. Ronnie has bi-polar disorder and suffers from delusions. He’s not a pathological liar or schizophrenic. An important distinction.

Well, I would agree that the “off the meds” argument is false, since Ronnie exhibits delusions both on and off meds. Just because he’s taking pills doesn’t mean he doesn’t suffer from bi-polar disorder. His medication only keeps him in check, it doesn’t cure him. Though I find it interesting that when he’s on meds, there tends to be an almost unnaturally positive spin on the film’s events, whereas when he’s off them, his world becomes nightmarish. Here’s a breakdown of subjective events I noted in the film when I saw it a second time.

ON MEDS
Ronnie hides in Det. Harrison’s car before he receives his ride-along. Now that could possibly be acceptable, I guess. Ronnie is certainly crazy enough to do something like that, but it’s illegal to break into someone’s vehicle. The tipping point is when he beats up a bunch of gangbangers (including horrifically breaking one guy’s arm) AND tracks down the kid who ran home. The film never alludes back to those dead thugs so who knows. The only witness to the event is Ronnie. Now, you can argue that there’s no reason to believe that Ronnie couldn’t do such a thing, but if I remember correctly, he had a hard time picking up Brandi when she was hysterical. If he can barely lift someone who weights a hundred or so pounds, that leads me to believe he wasn't really in that great shape. Sure, he can shoot a gun, but breaking arms and beating down three guys with a nightstick takes a lot of skill. Still, I’m willing to write this one off as a mere exaggeration of reality, or even reality.

OFF MEDS
Ronnie beats up the Cinnabon Guy but receives no repercussions (I guess Patton Oswalt could be too afraid to retaliate). Then he sees Brandi sleeping with Detective Harrison in the parking lot (this actually seems like the most out of place scene in the entire film, bordering on complete fantasy. I mean, it would make a lot of sense for Ronnie, once rebuffed after his “date” with Brandi, to imagine her a whore sleeping with the enemy so to speak). There’s the hilarious drug montage with Dennis (a big part of the joke is how exaggerated it is, it's a lot like the "town sequence" in Wet Hot American Summer), and then there’s the Oldboy sequence where he beats up the police (and Detective Harrison uses a giant metal sign on him). Still, his delusion certainly influences that fight. He fends off a dozen cops for over a minute (with a flashlight!). And why would Charles, the Capt. O'Landers kid, help out Ronnie with the cops? It doesn’t add up.

BACK ON MEDS
He comes back to the mall and meets the flasher. I think it’s pretty questionable that he could go to his locker/shooting range and grab a pistol (how does he still even have access?), shoots the pervert in the upper chest (easily would have bled out), and drags him (alive!) to the police. All set to the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” no less! Oh, and then he somehow gets his job back, and is deemed a hero by the community.

Also, just in general, almost every scene features Ronnie (except Dennis stealing shit, which can't be subjective), which lends credence to the film being filtered through his POV. Oh, and the film's title potentially has multiple meanings. It's the motto of mall security guards, but it could also refer to the act of a psychiatrist observing and reporting on a patient, or Ronnie observing events and reporting them to the audience itself.

Now if there weren’t all these weird moments, I’d agree that the ending has the same meaning as Taxi Driver. But to me, there’s something tonally interesting going on in the rest of the film. Maybe it’s a conscious thing maybe it’s not. I’m a believer in the idea that an artist isn’t always consciously aware of what they’re doing it just comes across in their work. I believe that Jody Hill was constructing a character portrait of a mentally ill tinpot dictator, and that in turn played an important part in the film’s constant tonal shifts. Maybe I'm completely off-base, but I think there's definitely some truth in my interpretation.

Just because the movie's tone changes with Ronnie's situation doesn't mean we're seeing it through Ronnie's eyes. To me it just means good filmmaking.

There's nothing in the film that out and out says to me that ANYTHING we see if meant to be taken at anything but face value - and if you're going to get subjective, you should really be getting subjective when Ronnie SAYS he killed the crack dealers but the scene we're shown does not have him killing anyone. He's lying, but if this movie was shown from his POV, we'd see him murdering those guys instead of beating them.

This is a comedy, so there will be things that are exaggerated for effect, like the drug montage. That's a joke, obviously. But the film's final, darkest joke is the same as TAXI DRIVER's final message - that Ronnie is seen as a hero for his fucked up actions.

Again, I don't have to believe in fantasy to accept that in the narrative of Pan's Labyrinth something fantastical is happening, because I can accept that in the story, the storyteller is telling me something fantastical has happened. I don't see how it serves the narrative to suggest that parts of the story are fantasy as presented here and in those other two movies, because the whole thing is of a piece. Whereas Taxi Driver ends as a joke on how our society behaves, Observe and Report lives in a world where people go gun crazy all the time. And so we have to laugh at the delusion fantasies of mentally imbalanced people because we live in a world where this behavoir is such that we have a stickied "School Shooting" thread.

The very act of making this character the protagonist crosses the line. Everything after is just.

Yeah, I think this is really the main thing standing in the way of the film being read as subjective. The universe Observe and Report is set in assumes someone as disturbed as Ronnie can not only hold a job, but be praised for it (he is somehow the head of mall security before all this shit goes down). That can't be subjective, and on that one piece of evidence, I'd have to rescind my previous argument, I think.

Expanding on the Taxi Driver comparisons a little bit, just look at both film's introductions. Some people wrongly argue that Travis Bickle isn't unhinged at the start of Taxi Driver, but becomes crazy as the film progresses. Yet from frame one, he's disgusted by crime, merely taking a job so he can better study the streets in an effort to clean them up. Perhaps the film's events speed up his mission, but his violence is inevitable. In that same vein, from frame one, Ronnie wishes he could carry a gun around the mall and act out Dirty Harry fantasies. The pervert, as Dre mentioned earlier, becomes like "an externalization of Ronnie's inner demons." Ronnie's violence is an inevitability. He just needs a stage to act out on.

I just saw the movie for the second time. It's still a classic but there were two interesting changes from the cut I saw.

1) When Harrison sits Ronnie down to tell him he's not going to become a cop, he says they went through their records and realized Ronnie tried to join the force several times before. Ronnie was so delusional that he thought it was finally going to work out. That added a whole other level of crazy to his character that made me look at the movie in a different light afterwards. Not sure why they got rid of that.

2) When Ray Liotta slams his face down on the ground after the Old Boy scene, he repeated the motion three or four times. The combination of the gore and violent sound effects was visceral and shocking. It's not a major difference but I'm sure that was a ratings issue.

The movie killed with the borderline retarded audience we were stuck with. The last five minutes of the movie was non stop laughter. That makes sense, considering it's one of the best comedy endings ever.

That first cut is really interesting. It wasn't even in the rough cut I saw in February, so I guess Jody axed it awhile ago.

I saw it again last night too. I was surprised Hill cut Dennis leaving the mall in the sports car (which has got to be the most expensive shot in the film). The cut from Ronnie being hit with a chair to explaining how he let Dennis go to his boss was very jarring. Or was this just a fuck-up by the projectionist at my theater?

Fuck-up by your projectionist. I saw the film Tuesday night, and the shot of Dennis driving out of the mall was totally in there.

Man, the female columnists on Salon.com are raking this film over the coals for the supposed "date rate" scene. Context, people! Context!

10/10 review

http://tinyurl.com/cutjhe

Strong praise indeed! Looking forward to seeing this one tomorrow, and even more looking forward to seeing the look on the unsuspecting crowd when it turns out this Paul Blart is a very, very Bad Santa.

Wow. What other films have you given 10/10 to, Devin?

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/author...11406/best.php

Thanks for the link.

That's not my AMERICAN ZOMBIE review...

Caught it in a matinée; being the middle of the day it was pretty empty to begin with, but I swear even in such a small crowd a couple of people left before the end. I myself have rarely felt so uncomfortable laughing at something, but as I said somewhere else, if you can't be uncomfortable and have fun at the same time, I don't know how you have fun.

Put me firmly in the non-fantasy camp for the ending. In fact Devin's review (conveniently up as I got home) pretty much exactly captures my thoughts on the movie, strengths and weaknesses, so I'm not sure what to write here.

I actually avoided The Foot-Fist Way for a long time because it was set in a world I knew well; I finally saw it a few weeks ago, and between that and this I am a devoted fan of Jody Hill now. I'll definitely have to track down Eastbound and Down when I can rent it. Hill has a weird ability to treat these kinds of characters with a certain type of respect, to show them as crazy or unappealing while still letting you see through their eyes and letting them be competent - they're jokes, but as Devin said, not the joke you were expecting. Like they're documentary subjects instead of characters, something a lot of actual faux documentaries can't seem to get right. Being able to do that and make it funny is kind of hard for me to even get my head around, let alone discuss intelligently.

Boy, Jody Hill walks a fine line in this movie. How fine? Fine as in absent one line from the sex scene, you'd have a Todd Solondz movie on your hands. I mean how many movies would have the love scene be almost date rapey? Loved the movie and the balls it had on it. That being said, not sure if I want to see it again any time soon.

Check out a couple of the columns on Salon.com, where they basically treat this film like its The Accused. If it weren't for the fact that I suspect this movie will sink like a stone, there would probably be even more more hue and cry by folks who don't get the tone and context of the film.

Well it walks a fine line there. Imagine if the line "why did you stop?" wasn't in there and it was just a scene of Ronnie fucking a knocked out woman? Thankfully it was walked back just that little bit so Ronnie wasn't a total monster but that was a fine, fine line.

Just to be clear. Loved the movie but it goes to some dark places/

Excellent, Excellent movie. I really love the tone and Seth Rogen's character. But I guess I was one of the few because the rest of the theatre didn't chuckle anytime after the opening scenes. It kinda made it even funnier to me.

I suspected it was going to be mostly dark humor when I saw Seth Rogen's character being a little off in the trailer. The part where he does that little shotgun action while being interviewed.

Spoilers: Ronnie's final extreme overreaction gunshot to the flasher was so beyond hilarious!

Perfect review, Devin. I loved everything about the movie. I've already had a friend complain about the movie, as she was expecting cute and cuddly Rogen. The flasher getting shot got an enormous reaction at the matinee showing I went to. As did Danny McBride's receipt of an epic beatdown. I might try and see this again paired with Crank 2 next week.

I loved this movie. I like it more and more as I mull it over. Just pitch perfect in regards to tone. And funny as hell. The theater wasn't even a quarter of the way full, but the laughter was so loud that you'd never know it.

I saw it with a friend who said that "it was the most fucked up movie I've ever seen." I guess I need to educate him a bit. First stop: Taxi Driver.

I agree with Capone on Ain't It Cool: Ronnie Bernhardt isn't DeNiro-esque in terms of Taxi Driver, he's DeNiro-esque in terms of The King of Comedy. He is just that much of a loser.

I remember not liking The Foot Fist Way but I really need to watch it again because I loved this movie so much. The vast majority of people won't I'm sure but fuck them, it's their loss. This might be better than Knocked Up.

Holy Christ, I thought that was Ben Best as Liotta's partner, but I wasn't sure until I looked it up on IMDB. Who knew that guy was would be such a chameleon?