OBSERVE & REPORT POST-Release discussion - Page 2

I totally forgot to use a quote from him in the review. I feel like this sums up large portions of the way people will react:

"I thought this was going to be funny, but it's kind of sad."

I haven't laughed that hard in a theater for a very, very long time. It wasn't just me, either, but the entire audience was laughing hard. For me, the crux of the humor came from the magical balancing act that Jody Hill performs and that Devin describes in his review. The fact that he so perfectly balances the sad, disturbing and inappropriate with the utterly hilarious is commendable. The fact that a mother can begin a heartfelt speech to her son, "The other day when I soiled myself . . . " and have it be hilarious, pathetic and touching (in some perverse way) is a miracle. I don't think there was a moment during this movie that I wasn't at least chuckling . . . if it wasn't the dialogue or characters outright, it was that perfect tone and balancing act.

"How much did they pay to storm Normandy? Or for King Arthur to kill Merlin?"

EDIT: 1,000 posts. And it only took me 5 years to get there.

Agreed, that's the pivot of the whole movie. It's so rare we get a mainstream film that doesn't coach us when to laugh.

By the way, in David Poland's point-missing review he mentions a reference to Miller's Crossing in Observe and Report . . . I must have missed it, perhaps I was laughing to hard or it just went over my head. Did anyone besides Poland catch it?

Pretty sure it's the "Look in your heart" line.

Yup, when Rogen's on his knees ala Turturro.

I didn't even remember that line in O and R until I went reverse, from Miller's Crossing and then realizing where it fit in. Freaking brilliant.

I saw this last night and a lot of people are going to be thrown off by this movie. It was interesting seeing Rogan play against type with a Bickle influence. Especially in the "Let me try that again" moment while he's lifting weights.

I get the feeling if you liked Foot Fist or Eastbound, you'll really like this. I found it to be interesting but not hilarious. Until that last scene I hadn't laughed a lot. But that was one helluva of save.

This film also makes me want to check out of King of Comedy and also who knew Albuquerque looks like the West San Fernando Valley and that Moltisanti played Bruce?

Oh and the music picks were fantastic.

I think the great thing about that line is that it doesn't just give you an excuse to claim Ronnie isn't a rapist, but it goes to the fact that in a way Brandi actually has a better idea of what's happening than he does - she intentionally gets fucked up on medication that Ronnie probably doesn't even understand the effects of (as far as he's concerned it just reins him in), and it's probably not the first time she's had sex while barely conscious.

It doesn't really make Ronnie look that much better (what he's doing is probably still illegal, and definitely wrong), but it makes her and her life look a lot worse, and when you think about it that's even darker than the scene would have been without that line.

I loved this film. For me, it's been a good year for movies (you just have to not see the bad ones).

It's interesting to me how Jody Hill makes a film that involves the audience in such completely reprehensible behavior in such a way that you're genuinely rooting for Ronnie to keep doing vile, awful things. I never rooted for Travis Bickle in TAXI DRIVER. But in this? At the end I wanted Ronnie to shoot EVERYONE.

And fuck David Poland. If "the correct way of reviewing a film" is here, he's way the fuck over there.

Holy shit, Ben Best's reaction to Rogen telling him "fuck you" at the end! It is literally unbelievable that WB would put this out there like they have.

Yeah, I was thinking about that last night, if the scene with Brandi is against anyone, it's a comment on a society where Brandi could find what happened to her to be a norm. By her saying "Why are you stopping motherfucker?" it suggests that this is for her not the first time she's been that fucked up and fucked. If you get the film, which is a criticism of that entire world and culture, if you get that the film is a satire, then that scene makes perfect sense in context.

Out of context? It's the most brilliantly fucked up line since "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school."

Jody Hill needs to be making more movies. The end of this is just pretty much perfect - and the last 20 minutes or so is just about as classic as you can get. The 10 or so people in the audience were silent during its entirety, but I was eating it up. People seemed more turned off by the drug sequence than the "date rape" scene, which I found peculiar.

It certainly wasn't the funniest part of the movie, but for some reason Danny McBride's chest tattoo of his son made me laugh the hardest. Just the way he points at it and says "you think I have just any motherfucker tattoo'd on me?" (or something to that effect) tickled me.

I know Taxi Driver is Hill's main influence here, but I see more Rupert Pupkin in Ronnie than I do Travis Bickle.

Loved it. Absolutely loved it. In a way I'm not surprised that Rogen had the balls to do this movie, but at the same time it's amazing that he's taken this career detour to do this movie that absolutely won't help his star power at all.

I don't see him doing a BEWITCHED.

Or, for that matter, a Land of the Lost.

Yup. It's fucking BRILLIANT.

Lots of people have and will point at that scene with the drug dealers as the one that changes the movie for them. For me, it's that scene in the police academy interviewer's office, and there's nobody else on the planet EXCEPT Seth Rogen who could've described that dream, and almost make it come off as endearing. But right then and there, I was onboard with that character, and what he wanted to do, even if his delusions were wrong. That's the feat (no pun intended, I swear to Christ) The Foot Fist Way failed to do, and why it never clicked with me.

This, though.....the moment Rogen drops the flasher with that gunshot, I wanted to cheer. Never would've expected this to be the first film this year to give me that reaction.

That's awesome, because it has you actively rooting for an insane person. You needed that crazy person to be cudly to make it work.

Not cuddly. But he is, as Devin says in his review, right. Even though he's batshit insane, nobody can deny he's not doing what he does with his heart in the right place. No shame in seeing his one truly justified violent act as a laudable.

I reacted like I did to Eastbound and Down: I appreciated the first half, enjoyed things more in the second half (starting probably at the Pena interlude). I think I have an aversion to comedies where the joke is about how awkward a situation is/how much characters are lacking basic human empathy because of overkill: Seinfeld-Curb-AD-The Office aren't exactly progenitors, but I think they're part of the reason I get less than excited about Ronnie and Kenny, no matter how well done they are. I want their stories and characters to be basically kept but realistic characterization thrown in. I mean dropping stuff like Pena's hand gesture everytime he's mentioned for a specific detail that's not about a type.

But both of them, as portraits of delusion, are top notch, and it's arguable that mitigating decency/humanity for any character would take the bite out. Some of the earlier music cues I didn't feel ("Masterpiece" was great), seemed like rushing through shorthand for Rogen's yearnings and ideas. But again, I liked the Pena montage. It was unexpected, as said above, as was the Ansari conversation. I loved the look on the flasher's face: he was clearly one of the few genuinely happy people in the film.

Another Wet Hot American steal, just before that montage: the conversation about showing him "the way." Also, it would be funnier/sadder if Ronnie was with Brandi at the end, regardless if she's only just standing off-camera and enabling his delusion: he would be ignoring someone who loves him for his own fantasy.

Which one? The one where he shoots an unarmed flasher?

Agreed, although I think Pineapple Express -a movie I didn't really like, but which definitely marched to its own beat- showed that Rogen wasn't interested in playing it safe, and that was pretty much confirmed by his decision to follow it with a porn-themed Kevin Smith movie. BTW, at the risk of getting people all hot under the collar about Smith again, what chance he's really praying this doesn't make much coin?

This played more like a drama to me when I saw it - much like a Solondz film. I'll have to watch it again. But, even having read Devin's review, I was still taken aback by how good this film is. I thought it would be Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and a 1/3rd.

Excessive, but not unjustified.

Also, worth it simply for the hard comedic beat it provided.l

Why would you think that, given the individuals involved?. Even if you haven't seen Foot Fist, the trailers mark this as the anti-Paul Blart.

I would like to hear you justify shooting the flasher. Tackling, hitting, etc, maybe. Shooting point blank?

The whole point is that it's utterly unjustifiable.

What else, in your opinion, did Ronnie do tht was not unjustified in some way. I'm pretty sure that part was intentionally setup and shot to be beyond unjustified.

...

Saw it earlier and had a fucking blast with it. It's dark and unsettling, but it never fails to be hilarious and make the sad funny.

Loved the quick shot of all of them riding down the escalator. That was great.

Props also for Liotta who plays this utterly straight like he's in Narc Part 2. He was a terrific straight man.

The advertising makes the movie seem more "goofy" than it is. But I thought I could be wrong and bought a ticket. I was wrong.

It's completely unjustified. What makes Jody Hill's film great is that through the entire film he's dragged the audience through a moral quagmire, so that by that point, not only do you feel Ronnie's shooting is justified, you're thinking that Ronnie shouldn't have stopped there.

I've caught it twice since Wednesday and I'm still completely reeling from that ending. With handguns legal (Since the Yuens are packing at the end) there's no way Ronnie won't jump to that extreme the next chance he gets, and I'm sure with that target practice he's not going to miss.

A hell of a progression from Foot Fist Way which I was mixed on. I have to agree with how awesome Ben Best was, his reaction at the end was aces.

Saw it, liked it. The ending completely blew me away. I thought he was going to tazer the guy--I had no idea he'd shoot him like that. The more I think about it, the more I liked the movie. And the cop fight with the music from Flash Gordon was awesome. I just started laughing hysterically.

Great movie. Great Where Is My Mind cover.

Got to see it tonight, and I wasn't sure if i could say I loved it walking out, but I really do think its growing at me. the balls of this movie, its really admirable.

that being said, the group I saw it with didn't think much of it, or leaned close to hating it. I think they had different expectations, but it is by no means a movie for all walks.

Jesse Plemons looks exactly like Matt Damon but with worse skin. I didn't know anything about him beforehand so for the first half of the movie I could've sworn I was looking at Matt Damon.

The shooting of the flasher really fucking hit me. I probably should have been expecting it, but damn, when it happened it floored me.

It's a shame, because I know this is not going to over well with the general public, but I think this is a really special movie. I was raving about it to a friend today, and I don't think he really understood why. Shit, I just saw it no more than 12 hours ago, and I think I need to see it again.

EDIT:

I forgot to mention how fucking awesome Ray Liotta is in this. The scene where he verbally rapes the shit out of Ronnie is pure gold.

Yeah, he's like Matt Damon's slightly more retarded looking little brother. And I get an Amy Adams vibe from Nell.

This movie just left me in a great state of awe. I was laughing, I was cringing, all great stuff. The friend I was with laughed quite a bit too, but I'm not sure how he felt about it overall. He's generally a good gauge of the general public (though he can lean towards more bizarre fare on a good day). Have to agree that this is definitely not gonna be huge with everyone, but I'm more than fine with that. I'm just glad it's out there.

Some of my favorite stuff in this movie might be a lot of smaller things. Rogen's reactions to that one bad cup of coffee just had me rolling for some reason.

I had a really random thought a while earlier while I was thinking of ways to describe this film and its characters. It's not entirely apt, but it made me laugh and conjure up strange images so I thought I'd share: Ray Liotta's character's relationship with Ronnie as a much more hostile version of The Simpson's Superintendent Chalmers and Skinner.

I think the events of the film are real, and not a delusional fantasy, but... Ronnie heals awfully quickly from the police beating. Anyone care to take a swing at that?

He doesn't heal quickly. It's months later. Nell said it would take months for her leg to heal.

Ended up seeing it again last night with a friend. Having let it sit with me twice, i've got even more respect for Jody Hill for pulling this off with so much of the audience (about 7 of which left, weird enough, after Ronnie muscles Patton Oswalt) on the side of a mental patient with a badge. The only better explanation I've got since yesterday is that, compared to Fred from Foot Fist Way, his intentions are still under something resembling justice. He wants to do good, he wants to save kids, it's that he doesn't have nearly the mental, emotional, or social capacity for it, and the idea of a character who wants to be genuinely great, and yet doesn't have the tools is at least a relateable idea, even if most people would never go to these extremes without bigger consequences. There's a weird empathy here that Jody Hill's evil fucking brain takes such joy on making the audience feel guilty for that never exists for a guy who's ultimate goals are really only serving himself.

I'm still really digesting the bigger, scarier, sociopathological parts of this, (I'll at least concede I mistook legal justification with "Ronnie chase bad guy, bad guy must be stopped, gun funny" before, and this was dumb) but the one reaction both me and my friend shared was that we had this strange, driving feeling that, like ice cream goes well with pie, a viewing of Watchmen would go awesome with this movie.

The transitional fade montage of him healing suggested to me that some time had passed as well.

I must have a lousy sense of movie time, then. I was thinking it was a matter of days.

It's understandable to think his healing was just days due to him not doing much except stay at home and lift weights after the police fight. I just rolled with it being a couple of months due that little montage.

Asshole.

The weightlifting happens at the mall, on the night of the police fight.

You couldn't be more dead-on with the "Taxi Driver" comparison. In some ways, I think it's more transgressive than "Taxi Driver" because with "Observe & Report" you have to stop and realize you're rooting for a violent sociopath whereas the tone Scorsese strikes makes Travis' mental state pretty apparent. Also, Ronnie wins at the end whereas "Driver's" ending is more ambiguous and open for interpretation.

As for the "date-rape" scene, I will say a few things: First, I don't think it's as cut-and-dry as "he's date-raping her" (and Hill's conscious enough of dark attitudes that he wouldn't cut around that just to make Ronnie more likable; this is a film that embraces darkness). The film goes out of its way to make Brandy an active participant where the drinking and drugs are her idea. That doesn't mean its necessarily consensual (she's blitzed out of her mind) even if she says "Don't stop motherfucker" but it's hard to have Rogen as the rapist in this scenario because he really does think she wants him. For him, the night is romantic and while we see the reality of making out with her vomit-filled mouth, this is love for his character. Of course, this is open for interpretation and I like that the film leaves it open and further confounds its audience.

Where I find the film troublesome is that there are only two women: the slutty demoness and the virginal redemption. While I don't think the film is conscious of it, it does go in the direction of saying that any woman who spreads her legs is a slut whereas the good woman (and this isn't based on Ronnie's "choice"; Nell is clearly a kind, if one-dimensional, person) is the one who abstains from sex altogether. Again, I don't think that's the belief of Hill or Rogen but I do find that aspect more upsetting than the "date-rape" scene.