Observe and Report the rapid rise and fall of anti-comedy

Can you call something a comedy when it doesn't seem primarily intended to be funny?

Observe and Report is the latest effort from director and writer Jody Hill, who has previously turned his hand to the recent successful HBO series Eastbound & Down - in which protagonist Kenny “You're fucking out, I'm fucking in” Powers went about as low as you can go in the conventional comedy format - and slow-gestating cult feature The Foot Fist Way, which also starred Danny McBride, this time as a horrifically socially inept karate sensei.

Like both of those, the main character in Observe and Report is hard to empathise with, and you'd be more likely to find yourself identifying with Michael Jackson (well, pre-Black Or White anyway) than Seth Rogen's loathsome and lecherous misfit Ronnie Barnhardt.

The boundary-pushing blitz of bad taste ‘gags’ seem to escort to its logical conclusion the gutterward path of cringe comedy, which has boomed since The Office and its numerous versions found itself an ardent worldwide audience, though in the US it seems to have also melded with the earlier, more purile-minded work of the Farrelly Brothers. 

Now we're given comic archetypes whose character arcs propel them instead towards tragedy - as would most likely be the case in real life - when before the bizarre characters and scenarios would have been presented with a more optimistic hue. It's a twist playing on your expectations of the genre, which is where the humour is supposed to be found.

(Forest Gump as played by Seth Rogen would most likely have caught a venereal disease courtesy of a catastrophic misunderstanding involving a couple of prostitutes, become an unwitting drug smuggler for Pablo Escobar, before running into the path of a locomotive long before he got the chance to use any similes involving some Milk Tray.)

 

However, doesn't that level of self-knowingness mean that it's going to be too self-referential for mainstream audiences to digest, requiring a deeper understanding than most are likely to want to invest if they’re just looking for some light-hearted chuckles? 

They're unlikely to go along to a comedy to have their preconceptions challenged, and they may already have certain expectations from a Rogen vehicle that are sure to be shattered with Observe and Report. (Well, apart from the fucking cuss words.)

Given that it's been trounced in the box office by the similarly themed but decidedly more audience-friendly (and more dunder-headed) Paul Blart: Mall Cop, movies like Observe and Report are likely to be limited to smaller audiences in future, though they’ll still be a welcome addition in terms of offsetting the more nauseating studio blockbusters which merely challenge the boundaries of good taste through their sheer awfulness. 

And anyway, it’s perhaps just as well, even as a fully grown adult I still shudder at the time I tried to sit through Bad Santa with the parents last Christmas...