view it • queue it • SCREW IT
Initially, I had no interest whatsoever in seeing this movie last year. Even with the reign of the Seth Rogen/Judd Apatow brand of comedy, this one just looked like it was riding on Rogen’s coattails and was probably nothing more than another raunchy nickel-flick looking to cash in on shock factor and off-color jokes.
I couldn’t have been more right.
Despite my better judgement, I started reading about how the film was inspired by Scorcese’s Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, two amazing films, and I started to get a little interested. After the fact, however, it’s clear that those inspirations for Rogen’s character took a backseat while his unpleasant social interactions and constant offensive language took the wheel. Just imagine a young Adam Sandler as Travis Bickle, or Pauly Shore as Rupert Pupkin. Those probably aren’t the greatest comparisons, but the lack of humanity that Rogen brings to this kind of medicinally-fueled, socially inept character leaves us with no connection to him, whereas Bickle and Pupkin seemed to represent a darker side of humanity that we understand but rarely act on. Without that kind of connection, we don’t give a rat’s ass about the characters, so the only thing left to entertain us is the “humor.”
Ray Liotta is Ray Liotta. While it is surprising that he still looks almost too much like he did two decades ago in Goodfellas, his straight-man act wasn’t hardly enough to save the movie.
I will admit that, several years ago, I probably would have found more humor in the cheap thrills and inappropriate jokes that made up the movie, I’ve grown to find more entertainment in movies that actually tell stories rather than ones that could have just as easily been a stand-up routine in some sleazy comedy club somewhere.
I don’t blame Rogen or the filmmakers for trying to make a buck, and I know that this kind of film does have entertainment value for a lot of people, it’s just not my cup of tea. Personally, I think the rise of these mindless hour-and-a-half comedies full of nothing but profanity and sex is due mostly to films becoming somewhat ephemeral. This is always a funny thing to me because merely thirty years ago, movies were nothing but ephemeral. Then home videos and DVD’s started to take over, and suddenly the film experience became a lot more than just that one glorious viewing in the theater – movies and television shows slowly became something that we could watch anytime and anywhere we wanted. Yet in recent years, it seems to me like, despite this enormous change in the way the entertainment industry works and what their targets are, movies seem to be getting more like magazines that we read once and then throw away instead of books that we enjoy to read over and over again.
Maybe that’s just me, but as for Observe and Report, I say SCREW IT.
