Since I already felt that the sensibility of the Apatow Gang’s Second Generation (i.e., not Judd Apatow himself, but the various kids from Freaks and Geeks who are gradually taking over American film comedy) was bordering on the sociopathic — viz. the attitude toward women and casual violence in Seth Rogen’s Superbad, or the autistic emotional dynamics of Jason Segel’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall — I guess I at least appreciate director Jody Hill (no relation to Jonah) making the theme explicit. Let me explain. In its (non-red-band) previews, and in its first thirty minutes or so, Observe and Report comes off as a lovable-loser-with-big-implausible-dreams comedy, sort of a cross between Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket and one of a hundred thousand Adam Sandler vehicles. But the film takes a disturbing detour when it’s revealed, in passing, that Rogen’s character is in fact not just simple, but bipolar. And he’s going to stop taking his meds. And let a drunk girl down the whole bottle, and then have sex with her while she’s virtually passed out. As you might imagine, hilarity ensues!
There are a few possible ways to go from here: we could get all movie-of-the-week, following the established Apatow M.O. of inserting a Serious Emotional Theme in with the Bromance and the Dick Jokes. Or the bipolar thing could just be a throwaway gag, in poor taste perhaps, but really just a more explicit version of the severe emotional problems that Sandler’s characters all obviously have. We could go on as if nothing had happened.
Or we could, as Hill bizarrely elects to do, turn the film into a comedic homage to Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, character studies centering on deeply disturbed and deluded individuals who, we realize more and more as we watch them, are dangers to themselves and others. Can we get there from here? Is there any way to blend a lowbrow comedy with an intense psychodrama without totally vitiating whatever is effective in both genres? Can Seth Rogen’s frowny puppy-dog expressions help us accept a long series of jokes about date rape, drug addiction, police brutality, alcoholism, parental neglect, sexual assault, mental illness and murder?
The answer, reader, is no.
by Evan Kindley | Source: 35mm print
11 Apr 2009 1:26 PM | Comments (1)
If disapproval of Jody Hill persists, take two episodes of Eastbound & Down and call me in the morning.
Your Doctor
12 April 2009
9:18 AM