Observing and Reporting…

Mall cop is the ultimate Rodney Dangerfield job, because a) you get a shirt with an ill-fitting collar – perfect for tugging at – and b) you get no respect. With two mall cop movies in one year mocking the profession, you can bet there’s never been a worse time to hold what Maclean’s magazine recently dubbed “the ultimate fake job.”

Ouch. If you’re looking for experience in law enforcement before applying for the police force, mall security seems like a perfectly reasonable step in your career path, and for the sake of debunking the dangerous oaf stereotype, I wish I could say the one person I knew to hold such a job was completely normal.

But that would be a lie.

His name was “Billy” (of course, it wasn’t, but, you know…) and I worked with him in construction several years before he kept the shoppers at a certain Edmonton mall safe from harm. He was a hard worker and generally a nice guy, if not a brainiac. He was also very muscular and prone to flashes of aggression. This, of course, is what happens when you’re taking twice the normal dosage of steroids – a fact he was very open about. After a typical ten to twelve hour day of labour, Billy would go to the gym for a couple of hours and wail on his pecs and whatnot. He also ate lard sandwiches for lunch to bulk up. And he yelled a lot. Eventually Billy left the company and became a male stripper; a few years later I saw him at the mall in uniform, a wild stare in his eyes – like he would snap a man’s neck for spilling an Orange Julius in the planter.

This is the stare Seth Rogan sports for much of Observe and Report, the second mall cop film after Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Like Kevin James’ Blart, Seth Rogan’s Ronnie Barnhardt is as doughy as is dedicated, but this is not a Farrelly Brothers type of slapstick scenario. Comparisons of Cable Guy-meets-Taxi Driver are apt, as this is truly a journey into the food court of darkness. Ronnie is the socially-retarded, achingly non-self-aware head of security at your average North American mall. He longs to be permitted to pack heat, loves his free coffee from the cinnamon bun place, and runs a tight ship with his four equally eccentric underlings.

When Brandi (Anna Farris), the aloof makeup counter bimbo he’s in love with, is traumatized by a serial flasher, Ronnie springs into action, promising to “murder” the trench coat Casanova. But when the real cops, led by Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta, master of the asshole cop role), are brought in to solve the case, he gets in a territorial pissing match that gives him the courage to finally try out for the force. With his newfound confidence, he asks out Brandi, confides in a co-worker with a secret and goes off his meds. Ronnie’s at the top, but his escalator’s going down. His delusion and rage lead to a streak of violence that’s shocking but funny, disturbing but triumphant, and in the end, tough to reconcile.

Ronnie is one of the roles where a comedy guy gets to cautiously stretch his dramatic chops. Rogan has become a star on the strength of multi-dimensional everyman characters beat down with self-doubt and pathos, however, this is a much darker version of that usual lovable schlep. Here he plays a guy who isn’t self-deprecating, who – like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver or Jim Carrey’s title character in The Cable Guy – lacks the self awareness to really fit in, and whose frustration turns violent. Ronnie is a genuine outsider, not a character that the average viewer can relate to, which is ballsy.

One of the beautiful things about Observe and Report is writer-director Jody Hill’s knack for unexpected twists. He’s one of the creators of Eastbound and Down and the guy behind the Foot Fist Way, both vehicles for Danny McBride (who has a small role in this film as a white trash gangsta). As in those shows, O&R’s protagonist is an obstinately clueless narcissist who is both difficult to root for but also full of surprises. The plot of Observe and Report is full of surprising 180s that manage to stay true to the protagonist because Ronnie is so unpredictable himself.

The movie asks more from the viewer than a standard underdog story, such as Blart, and it pays off. Of course, Observe and Report won’t make a fraction of what that film raked in (nearly $170 million worldwide), but it’ll definitely help foster the Cult of Rogen while earning Hill respect as relatively fresh-faced director.

So here’s to not playing it safe. In the words of Ronnie Barnhardt, “The world has no use for another scared man. Right now, the world needs a f**king hero.”

-Dave Alexander