As soon as I learned that Scott "Mr. Unwatchables" Von Doviak had gone out of his way to avoid seeing the writer-director Jody Hill's new comedy Observe and Report, I knew that I would move hell and high water of necessary to get an early gawk at it. I can't chalk this up entirely to morbid curiosity. I enjoyed Hill's first film, The Foot Fist Way, a raggedly low-budget indie comedy starring Danny McBride as a malfunctioning martial arts instructor, and I loved Eastbound & Down, a six-episode HBO series that Hill co-created with Ben Best and McBride, who played a broken-down wreck of a burnt out professional baseball player. Observe and Report stars Seth Rogen as Ronnie Barnhardt, a shopping mall rent-a-cop who could be Paul Blart's evil twin. An overgrown pudgy ball of unfocused adolescent rage, Ronnie sees his chance for redemption in the quest to apprehend a flasher who's been bothering people in the parking lot; the movie, which tends to wear its conceptual ideas on its sleeve, makes it clear that the flasher is Ronnie's doppelganger, but instead of harassing people with his unclothed swinging dick, Ronnie has mace and a baton and is trying to find a way against the mall's prohibition against loaded firearms. This is Hill's entry into big-budget, major studio feature filmmaking, and he's clearly set on maintaining his signature edge: a satirical approach towards blustery, lower-class macho bullies and the corrupted cultural images of masculine heroism from which they take their cues, that flirts dangerously with condescension. Bringing that sort of thing off in the context of a big commercial comedy that has to make it past the preview audience test groups would be some trick, especially since Hill's direction tends to be pretty rudimentary beyond his way with actors and his ability to set up a joke. Observe and Report also suggests that it might be some trick pulling it off without Danny McBride in the lead.

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