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It was inevitable that the Seth Rogen comedy Observe and Report would, regardless of its own qualities, suffer from its thematic association with the ubiquitously advertised simpleminded slapstick of Paul Blart: Mall Cop. What was not expected, however, is that O&A would utilize that same suburban security guard shtick to ambitiously homage, parody and even sort of critique the dark, paranoid fanatasy of Martin Scorsese’s infamous Taxi Driver.

While writer/director Jody Hill’s strange and eventful movie may not be entirely successful (it may take me a few viewings to settle that), it is often surprising and challenging in its wild shifts of tone, in much the same way that Rogen’s other recent movie, Judd Apatow’s Funny People, cavalierly mixed conventional genre expectations with unsettling examination of the psychology of failure and desparation. I wasn’t sure it worked in Funny People, but mostly because I objected to the pathos of that film’s more conventional elements.

Observe and Report treads on somewhat less dangerous ground in that regard, but delves much deeper into the darkness, with Rogen turning in a remarkably effective (and, importantly, understated) performance that enables the movie to swing violently from the absurd comedy his fans expect to bracing contemplations of sociopathy, while never leaving his orbit.

I was beginning to worry about the state of the Apatow-style comedy over the past year, as it began to spawn too many watered-down off-shoots, like last year’s underwhelming Role Models. But this new trend of entries that are trying to subvert the genre from within have the potential to reinvigorate the movement, and Observe and Report is a promising indicator.

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