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Arts & Entertainment

Weekend Movie Forecast: <em>Observe and Report</em> and <em>Anvil!</em>

By

John Del Signore

Published Apr 10, 2009

Modified Apr 10, 2009

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By now you surely know all about Observe and Report, the dark new comedy starring Seth Rogen as a highly unsympathetic mall cop, so let's get down to brass tacks. NY Mag's David Edelstein describes it as a "pathological" comedy, writing, "It’s set in a mall and centers on a cop, but it is to Paul Blart: Mall Cop as Taxi Driver is to Taxi. Ronnie makes for an aggressively unattractive hero—and some of us were already thinking, Haven’t we seen enough of Seth Rogen for one lifetime? Yet director Hill piles on the unpleasantries as if determined to test our impulse to identify with the man carrying the gun (or, here, Taser)...But somehow—the magic of comedy—it’s also uproarious."And then there's Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere: "There's no way you can listen to guys like New York's David Edelstein... Trust me, they're jerking themselves off... It's one thing to make a stupid comedy with idiotic occurrences that could never happen in real life, but Observe and Report is trying to do something else here—to look with some degree of semi-comic honesty into the enraged and diseased heart of a lonely fat bipolar nerd (Rogen)... Observe and Report has instead persuaded me that [director Jody] Hill is a copout compromiser who lacks the courage of his interests and instincts. He's made a semi-dark nerd-psychopath comedy and (just to be safe) a moronic, logic-free, dumb-ass Paul Blart comedy with an ending that...I'd better be careful here."

 

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By

John Del Signore

Published Apr 10, 2009

Modified Apr 10, 2009

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Click on the film stills above for more on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which, besides Observe and Report, include Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Hannah Montana: The Movie, An Unlikely Weapon: The Eddie Adams Story, Lymelife, In A Dream, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Dragonball: Evolution, The Human Condition, The City of Lost Children, and El Topo.

John Del Signore

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Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.

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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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