Respect Authority

Now, I haven’t been impressed with Seth Rogen for a long time. Pineapple Express would have been barely entertaining and way too long had the subject matter been anything other than weed, and Zack and Miri Make a Porno had just enough novel nudity and crude humor to be bearable - more a testament to the last-ditch desperation of Kevin Smith than Rogen’s comedic prowess.

That said, and much in the same way Will Ferrell managed to shock me with the record low that was Kicking and Screaming, I’m both surprised and disappointed to find that Rogen is already writing his own will on the silver screen - and it’s called Observe and Report.

About the illicit plight of some mall cop who’s hell bent on stopping a flasher run amok, Observe and Report is pretty much Kevin James’ Mall Cop with a different overweight lead and undoubtedly less family-friendly humor. The fact that the movie is being released only a few short months after Mall Cop — which in my opinion only got attention because it didn’t star some predictably washed-up former Old School cast member — only makes this newest turd of the silver screen more embarrassing for Rogen, who really should have called it quits for a few years post-Pineapple.

Besides, really? Two movies about mall security guards? Are we really so starved for content as a creative people that we can’t think of slightly less mind-numbing material? Or are movies now bound to travel the brief and disastrous route of quirky nonfiction books - where a few blockbusters about the history of salt, or milk, gave way to a generation of books documenting the completely uninteresting backgrounds of everything from toothpicks to T-shirts. Let’s make something clear: Good Will Hunting should not be interpreted as carte blanche to make movies about every janitor, grocery store clerk and mall cop out there.

Oh, and a word of advice to the casting director over there at Mindless Movies Inc. - shaving a chubby guy’s head and removing his ostentatiously geeky glasses does not a sexually appealing man make. Even for trashy makeup-counter girl Anna Faris.