What Comes After Numb and Dumb?

I drove to my nearest mall to see the most peculiar Observe and Report this past weekend, mainly on account of I heart Ana Faris and Seth Rogen.  It's a black comedy of a genre I'll dub Stupid Movies For Smart People: think Napolean Dynamite or any indie/studio pic where the line between making fun of weirdass misfits doing outrageous dumb stuff, and romanticizing weirdass misfits doing outrageous dumb stuff gets willfully blurred. 

In a Stupid Movie For Smart People it's hard to tell if you're supposed to empathize with the stupid people and bad behavior in the movie or feel superior, because generally -- and this is true of Observe -- the people who've made the movie aren't sure how they feel about it.  Such trying-to-have-it-both-ways character work has diffused the gags here.  While I admire the audacity of this particular black comedy of outrageousness, it's largely full of jokes that are conceptually funny; they're more humorous in the abstract than they are laugh-out-loud funny.

This may account for the picture's disappointing box office performance, given the Seth Rogen factor -- that and the fact that a straight-up farce of a mall cop movie (Paul Blart) had already pretty much usurped Observe's turf.  But Rogen deserves props for giving full exposure to his dark side, and Hill is onto something, however schizophrenic.  From a romantic comedy sociological point of view, Observe and Report may mark the official end of the line for the American screwball comedy ethos.  Call it "when screwball went psycho."  He's a bi-polar Travis Bickle Lite, she's a dumb cosmetics salesgirl slut, and their version of high jinks ensue ends in a perverse parody of drunken/drugged date rape.

Sound like a good time to you?

Oddly enough, I'm going to make a case for this cynical/sentimental, half-great, half-awful movie as the only real sign of contemporary arts & entertainment life in an Easter weekend that seemed part and parcel of our Great Recession.  Hill and crew were at least trying to, like, do something, when the movies they were in competition with felt like the cinematic equivalent of zombie banks.

Top float in this unimpressive Easter parade was The Hannah Montana Movie.  Can't say I'm a Miley Cyrus fan, but she's gotta be the whole deal here: I read the script, which was so color-by-numbers I had the sensation of having read it fifty times before.  There is nothing on the innocuous pages of this little puppy that makes it 2009-significant.  Coulda been made in '39, '59 -- oh, pick a 9, and then go look up "formulaic" in your on-line dictionary to see if the pic's title is in there yet.  But Hannah won the weekend with a $34 million dollar take, kids, so who cares what a curmudgeon says?

Second place was earned by number four in The Fast and the Furious franchise.  Evidently dropping two "thes" (and bringing back Vin Diesel) worked like a charm ($28 million), but what we're looking at in Fast and Furious is a car chase.

Perched in third place, Monsters and Aliens continued to perform, reportedly helped by its 3-D gimmick  and the, well, y'know: monsters... aliens...

In short, our current cultural moment is anything but memorable, which brings me to an interesting screed by Mark Harris in a recent issue of EW that bemoaned the equation of a down economy with dumbed-down movies and TV.  In "Stop the Inanity!" Harris argues that in hard times, however numb and depressed we may be, we don't necessarily just want escapist airhead fare.  True, literature may have gone to the bodice-rippers (romance novels are outselling everything else on the shelves), but moviegoers are ready for something else:

Hollywood types with a sense of history that stretches back farther than Titanic love to use the Great Depression as evidence that a plunging Dow means people just want to have a happy time at the movies. But the Depression coincided with the dawn of the sound era, so movie-goers went to everything. Musicals, gangster films, Westerns, romantic comedies, monster movies, historical spectacles, biopics, sexy pre-Production Code dramas, and even what passed at the time for gritty, rough-edged social realism. People checked their troubles at the door, not their brains.

I'm with Mr. Harris on this, and though I doubt that Hollywood is listening, I can always hope. While Observe and Report is an iffy place marker in the meantime, I anxiously await the arrival of some Brilliant Movies For Me People.  That old stupid/smart dichotomy only gets you so far.

Comments

[Donna from Louisiana]

Bodice-rippers!

Bodice-rippers!!!

That term went out in the 70's.

Don't dish the romance novel, your parents are the living proof of romance.

And have you ever tried to rip a bodice? Get your wife in something that buttons or zips in the back, and try to rip if off of her?

Donna shaking her head.

[E.C. Henry]

Billy, there is HOPE. Go see "Adventureland." Reminded me of a time in my life 18 - 22, as that's what this story is about a coming of age thing with a kid in 1987. Hey! 1987, the year I graduated high school. I could TOTALLY relate to the soundtrack. But I digress...
I have seen the future. It has a name. Kristen Stewart. Next Meg Ryan? (I can only hope...)

Haven't seen "Observe and Report" yet but Anna Ferris's over-the-top performance in the trailer made me laugh.

- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA

[mernitman]

Donna from Louisiana: Actually, I shouldn't dish them because I wrote and published 20 of them, back in the day (under another name)... but I always liked that phrase (isn't the idea that you're ripping into the front of them, as opposed to ripping them off...?) But anyway: Billy hanging head in shame.

EC: Thanks for the recommend -- I've been hearing nothing but good things about "Adventureland," so it's topping my list.

[J]

Miley Cyrus / Hannah Montana made a deal with the devil.

It's the only explanation for that show/movie/person/empire.

[kristen]

O&R was weird. We saw it in a mall theatre too, and the 3 of us who went together to see it had no clue what to think of it when it was over. I can tell you that the teens in the audience LOVED it. Uproariously. Especially any part where Rogen was beating on cops and skateboarders. I did like the "Chick-Fil-A" joke quite a bit, I'll admit.

I'm dying to see Adventureland. I love crappy old amusement parks and 80s nostalgia. Win-win...

[Christian Howell]

I agree that the dumbing down of cinema is losing it a fan. I only go to superhero movies now because I get tired of the same old schtick.

Fart jokes can be smart. Is it that HWood is buying from the non grads who follow all of the "silly" Syd Field guru techniques that are so hit and miss we should know beforehand?

I don't know. Maybe it's that only twenty-something slacker caucasian males go to the movies? No. Only people amused by sparkling things go to the movies? No. Maybe only women who only want a man and no job go to the movies? No.

Hmmm, I give up. Well, not tryign to get some smart comedies made but trying to figure out the trends.

Anyway timely post. Hope all is well on the home front.

[anon]

What is with America's fascination, dare I say love affair, with Seth Rogen?

[mernitman]

j: Devil looks a lot like Mickey Mouse.

Kristen: Crappy old amusement parks, yum!

Christian: Love your three questions. It's actually what people in the Story Department ask themselves all the time.

Anon: ...and then there are the Infinite Mysteries...