Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig!

Place still smells like John Wayne Gacy's basement... in a good way...

So much has changed since I last wrote for AICN in 2005: there's a black candidate for President of the United States, a white heavyweight champion of the world, a married (and substantially lighter) redheaded webmaster, one more McWeeny, one less planet, and kudzu in Southeast Ohio. It's a strange new world... one in which Richard Gere is a box office gamble, while Seth Rogen is a bona fide movie star. I think I speak for all non-devastatingly handsome men everywhere when I maintain that we are a stronger nation for this.

But with great success comes great resentment, and while most of you are on board with Rogen's much-deserved stardom, I've noticed a "look-at-me" few rebelling against his anti-hunk ascendency. "He isn't funny!" "He's unattractive!" "He isn't funny, and he's unattractive!" "I liked him, but then he got popular, and now I miss Andrew McCarthy." Most of this is contrarian twaddle; no one had a problem with Peter Jackson until FELLOWSHIP, and no one took a shot at Judd Apatow until he had a box office hit (well, "no one" save for Mark Brazill, and there's a trail of emails available online to show you just how well that worked out). But on the off-chance that maybe a sliver of this uncalled-for animus is genuine, here are a few facts to consider:

1. Seth Rogen is funny.

2. Albert Brooks was no one's idea of a ladykiller in 1982, but his aesthetically unfortunate schtupping of Kathryn Harrold couldn't stop MODERN ROMANCE from becoming one of the great romantic comedies of the last thirty years. If Rogen nailing Katherine Heigl offended you, imagine it with ninety percent more back hair. Oh, and Chico Marx... he was kinda funny looking, no? Got laid on the regular.

3. I miss Andrew McCarthy, too.

But as I was saying, I don't think anyone with a rational outlook on the world is buying into some kind of Rogen backlash. Wait 'til the fall for that noise (when he'll be following up the great and wonderful PINEAPPLE EXPRESS with Kevin Smith's ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO - by the way, not a comment on the quality of that film). Right now, he's nothing but a twenty-six-year-old comedy wunderkind who romanticizes marijuana all out of proportion like a twenty-six-year-old comedy wunderkind should. Chances are, he'll evolve. If not, I'm sure he'll work a stunning variation on THE CORSICAN BROTHERS in 2013.

Evidence of Rogen's willingness to get away from the pot humor - which, frankly, is a relatively new development for anybody who's been with the guy since FREAKS & GEEKS - can be found in Jody Hill's screenplay for OBSERVE AND REPORT, where Rogen's character, a mall security guard named Ronnie, makes it all the way to page 101 before firing up the Al Green (for what appears to be the first time in his life). Unless the script was massively rewritten between late '07 and the beginning of production last April (in dusty ol' New Mexico), Hill's awkward character study plays a little like the further adventures of Fred Simmons (aka Danny McBride's delusional tae kwon do instructor from Hill's THE FOOT FIST WAY): Ronnie's a hard-charging social misfit who could've easily achieved his dreams by now (he wants to be a cop) had he any sense of restraint.

Instead, Ronnie patrols the Carolina Mall with overt self-importance; he engages in mild-speed, ROAD WARRIOR smash-ups with skateboarding delinquents; barks at the mall walkers for exceeding the maximum gait speed; and aggressively profiles a cell phone salesman of Middle Eastern descent named Saddamn. Like Simmons, Ronnie is a deeply unsympathetic protagonist; he's the kind of guy who's lost so often in this life that he's no choice but to switch off the sense of shame. Respected by no one, and loved only by his outlandishly alcoholic mother (with whom he shares "a shitty double-wide at the very end of the shittiest trailer park in town."), Ronnie takes it for granted that he is the ultimate authority on everything that goes down in the Carolina Mall. And while he lacks the power to place a single wrongdoer under arrest, he is emboldened by his ability to "observe and report". He is "the law's right hand". Or, as he boasts to the skateboarders he wrangles in the early going, he sees the crime, and he phones it in!

So when the local authorities are called in to investigate a series of "flashing" incidents (basic pervert in a trench coat shenanigans), Ronnie sees it as an opportunity not to suck up, but to flaunt his expert detecting skills - which, again, amounts to copious racial profiling and the rampant harassment of everyone save for Brandi (Anna Faris), the department store makeup counter floozie he wants to fuck. This quickly gets on the nerves of Detective Harrison - who, frankly, is much more interested in fucking Brandi himself than busting a rampaging sexual deviant. Together, they ascertain jack shit about the criminal, but that doesn't stop Ronnie from boasting to his buddies that they performed like some kind of Hackman and Scheider dream team.

Though I got a kick out of the Ronnie/Harrison interplay in Hill's script, there's no doubt the dynamic will be drastically different in the finished film; this is what happens when you recalibrate a youngish detective role to fit a grizzled bulldog like Ray Liotta. Whereas Harrison is shockingly tolerant of Ronnie's TV-cop-drama interrogations in the early going, I've a feeling that Liotta might play these scenes with a little more aggression. Personally, I'm hoping to see some of that NARC rage resurface; and if Hill dares to tap into that SOMETHING WILD fury... that way greatness lies (I'm not alone in believing that Ray Sinclair is one of cinema's greatest psychos, am I?).

Such ugliness would certainly fit with Hill's stated intent to shoot the film as "sloppy and real". Though he uses this to describe a full-on, trailer-bound fistfight between Ronnie and his mother (which reads like a cross between a Clouseau/Cato sparring match and the Cage/Goodman brawl in RAISING ARIZONA), I get the feeling that Hill would love for OBSERVE AND REPORT to play a little like a small-potatoes, white-trash rendition of a high-octane 70s cop flick. If so, it'll be interesting to see how this gibes with the broad, character-based comedy of THE FOOT FIST WAY; that's a lot to bite off for a sophomore feature.

As with most comedy screenplays nowadays, I'm pretty sure most of the dialogue in Hill's script is strictly place-holder material - which is good since some of it (particularly the exposition portions) is kinda perfunctory. That said, I'll be sad if this gem gets jettisoned:

It must not be getting jettisoned since WB just emailed me to remove it. I will fight the power at a later date. "Pick your battles," and all that.

For the record, Ronnie does eventually finagle an inebriated hook-up with Brandi, and I'm pretty sure the gloriously repugnant, kissing-through-chunks-of-vomit bit is a (very welcome) first.

To paraphrase a line from the script, OBSERVE AND REPORT is best described as the heartwarming saga of a taser-wielding fascist who learns that his shit doesn't just stink, it smells horrible. It's a portrait of bottoming out, bottoming out some more, and then completely melting down. And while Rogen's Ronnie may seem like a law-abiding creep on the surface, there's a solid core of honor buried under the narcissism. Building off of Rogen's fairly scuzzy process server in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (guy's banging a high school chick), it suggests that this talented bastard has scant interest in playing the lovable, Belushi-esque scoundrel. He wants to drag the audience down into a morass of minimum-wage failure, and see if they still love him after he's behaved deplorably for a couple of hours. I can get behind this.

So, please, stow the backlash until Rogen does something truly objectionable... like co-star in a Nancy Meyers movie.

Faithfully submitted,

Mr. Beaks