Observe and Report

Observe and Report should just be called Vomitus and Pubis because therein lies its spine. The fat guy's cock gets more screen time than Viola Davis in Doubt. Years from now film historians will recall how in 2009 Warner Brothers led the charge to more permissive male genitalia on display, first in the vastly superior Watchmen and now in Observe and Report.
Observe and Report digs deep into the ugly recess of the human soul only with a few jokes to let you know the writer/director (Jody Hill, The Foot Fist Way) doesn't take the senseless beatings and violence too seriously. There are moments that will make even detractors, of which I am one, laugh out loud. It works like this - I see you slip on a banana peel and I laugh quite hard even though I am seriously worried about your health. Observe and Report would've worked had it played its sociopathic revenge seriously in the manner of Taxi Driver or even more apt Der Starke Ferdinand (Strongman Ferdinand, a 1976 film from Alexander Kluge) since O&R seems to be modeled after that German films depiction of a sad sack fascist security guard who assassinates a politician and then when arrested asks to be made head of state security since he knows the system's flaws.
Hill's humor derives from portraying his characters as disgusting whether it's because of their beauty or lack of same or even because of their religious views. John Waters creates similar kinds of grotesque views of humanity but he gives his population humanity. Hill only gives us asshole after asshole and with no sign of redemption or especially coolness. Observe and Report exists only to chronicle obsession and stalking. Seth Rogen playing the mall security job has done better work in similar genre-mixing stews like Pineapple Express. Similarities to Paul Blart Mall Cop are mere coincidence yet indicative of the synchronicity of Hollywood to mainstream pap.
As if to hammer home how sophomoric his skills are Hill pleasures his audience with rhyming visuals. The sequence of the flasher being chased through the mall involves lots of traveling takes, lots of going around corner shots and since the naked offender is fully exposed some flesh colored nylon holding his cock in place. We can see the dangle but the movie dictates that it's not swinging to and fro. Earlier on Hill has done a weak montage of Rogen driving in his mall cart and the film uses dissolves and revolving tracking shots. As unsophisticated as this filmmaking comes across it fits the mall world as snugly as Anna Faris wears her all too brief role as the mall's ditzy cosmetics hostess. Michael Pena also wastes his time in an underdeveloped role as Rogen's assistant.
At one point in Observe and Report Ray Liotta, playing a police detective whose patience has been pulled taunt by Rogen, decides to stage a revenge prank. He invites Rogen to his office to give him the results of Rogen's admittance test to the police academy only beforehand he lets his detective buddy hide in the office closet to listen in. While Liotta is explaining to Rogen that his psychological profile indicates he's a danger to himself and others the guy listening in the next room walks out and states: "I was going to stay and laugh but this is too brutal." My feeling exactly.