Observe and Depress

I just finished watching one of the many cam versions of Observe and Report (whoops, piracy is bad, yadda yadda yadda), and my overall impression of it was that it was just depressing. The majority of the dialogue wasn't funny, and I could tell most of the jokes that were going to be made by/about the majority of the characters. The Brandy subplot was more annoying than entertaining, and I still fail to understand why Detective Harrison hated Ronnie so much. Something about having to spend his whole day at the mall or whatever. Blah blah blah I hate easy days at work too. Oh wait, all my days at work are easy and I love it. Ha!

On the positive side, every scene involving Aziz Ansari was funny, as would be expected from a scene involving Aziz Ansari. Oh, and that also goes for the cop with the big mustache, which I believe went unnamed throughout.

Despite Seth Rogen's presence in this movie, it fell way flat for me. Then again, I thought that Pineapple Express was so good that I may have had unrealistic hopes for this movie.

Addressing the "dark comedy" aspect of this movie would be like addressing the "photorealistic" aspect of the Teletubbies. It was clear that this is what the movie was reaching for, since most of the time the characters' flaws were the butts of the jokes, but I didn't care at all about any of them (as opposed to other movies whose characters I care deeply about, I know). They just weren't realistic enough for me to feel guilty at all about laughing when Ronnie's mental health was mocked, for instance. I just felt annoyed that the joke wasn't better.

I guess you should see this movie if you love Seth Rogen, or if you watch it for free, but I would have been very annoyed if I had spent the $10 to see this in a theater. Whoops, Seth Rogen, that's your movie that you had to put work into and pretend to enjoy. I'm sure he'll feel that burn as he lays on his bed of money and diamonds tonight.

-Dave