The darkest comedy of the decade? It’s possible. Let’s call this the The King of Comedy of mall cop movies. It’s a real cringe-o-rama, ugly and bleak. It’s harder on your heart than that slimy popcorn butter at the multiplex. At some point around the middle of the film, one character has a line that goes “I thought this was going to be kind of funny, but it’s actually kind of sad” and that likely sums what most people think when they see this and why this was a box office bomb. Rifle through the internet for opinions and you’ll find an army of people who passionately hate this film and another army of people who love it. And you know what that means: CULT MOVIE ALERT.
It’s one of those comedies that deals with a delusional idiot. Seth Rogen is a mall security guy who takes his job so seriously that people laugh at him. He thinks he’s a real cop. He wants others to respect him as a real cop and he goes to ridiculous lengths to achieve that. For awhile, his antics are silly as can be and then gradually, almost casually, it becomes disturbing.
The film gets dark when it does something that few comedies ever do, which is address its main character’s mental illness. Analyze the history of movie comedies through the prism of psychology and you find libraries of unacknowledged mental disorders. Isn’t Harpo Marx essentially psychotic and dangerous? Isn’t Stan Laurel basically retarded? No one talks about that stuff though, because it’s just gonna bum you out.
Well, writer/director Jody Hill isn’t afraid of that. This film’s pivotal moment explicitly unveils that Rogen’s character suffers from bipolar disorder and that moment leaves a scar on the film that never heals. It explains everything, from his behavior at work to his depressing home life.
While Hill’s at it, he also throws some harsh violence at us (an ugly onscreen arm snap, blackjacks to the face, a blood-splattered shooting) and an arguable “date rape” scene, which really set off some critics. In that scene, Seth Rogen has sex with a drunken, pilled-up, barely conscious Anna Faris. What the outraged writers miss is that the joke there isn’t that date rape is funny—the joke is that Seth Rogen isn’t smart enough to realize that she’s too drunk to have good judgement. He thinks the date’s going well. He’s so socially backward that he interprets her substance-addled babble and giggles as genuine affection. He’s not just ready to sleep with her, he’s ready to marry her. He’s wrong. He’s wrong about everything. He’s wrong throughout the whole film. The scene approves of date rape like The King of Comedy approves of kidnapping.
To laugh at this one, you’ve got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. You’ve got to feel good about feeling bad.
You might have to be a bit of an asshole.
I laughed hard, of course.