So, have you been following the observing & the reporting on the latest Jody Hill comedy? The internet has been a clamoring about the movie and where it lies in the fabric of modern society (from date rape questions to the ‘comedification’ Taxi Driver). Probably the most interesting thing that I read was from Phil Nugent in the comments section of Daily Greencine’s post on the film.
Anyone who’s read those interviews in which Jody Hill gives props to “Taxi Driver” knows that he thinks he was trying to challenge heroic-vigilante movie stereotypes, and anyone who’s actually seen the thing knows that either Hill’s execution wasn’t up to his concept or that he chickened out in the key violent scenes, where the movie seems to be implicit in the celebration of Rogan’s homicidal viciousness. Because Hill couldn’t figure out a way to make something that looked any different from the average Adam Sandler movie, he would up making a movie whose point seems to be to raise the acceptable level of mayhem for Adam Sandler movies.
One reason why I don’t by the date-rape thing is because the movie is so obviously not of this real world. The mayhem, carnage and destruction of property and law by Rogen’s character (in the most glaring example of this, freely admits in a police station while bringing in a boy to murdering the boys father and five other guys). The movie isn’t aiming for any sort of realism or weight depicted in something like a Todd Solondz or heck, even a Martin Scorsese movie. Yet I do think the movie is doing something right making folks consider how they process a gag-driven studio comedy that in its non-realistic delivery can still ask interesting questions in unique ways. Will there actually be a post-O&R fallout in how a studio comedy is designed and where the bar is actually set at? Is the quote above over-reacting, prophetic or simply irrelevant? I tend to skip nearly all Adam Sandler, The Judd Apatow Collective and Will Farrell comedies (Even the ones directed by Adam McKay) anyway, although occasionally I catch something like Anchorman or The Wedding Singer) or Superbad to see what I’m not missing. The only thing that got me into Observe & Report was the (red band) trailer that did seem to promise something different. (Ditto on Pineapple Express for that matter, although there was the David Gordon Green factor there)
While there is no formal text review of the film around here, Andrew, Matt & Myself talk about some of this in our latest Row Three Cinecast
Other interesting pieces on Observe and Report around the web: IFC Daily, Jay Cheel, Kim Voynar, Ian Pugh, Greencine Daily.
This discussion currently has 19 responses.
April 16, 2009
I’m surprised that NO ONE mentions the sequences with the FAT naked dude running through the mall.
Meanwhile, people made a HUGE deal about a “blue penis” in Watchmen.
People are idiots.
April 16, 2009
I caught the advance screening of the film and after seeing it I couldn’t even muster up the energy to write a review for it. I thought it was funny, but not especially clever or remarkable in what it did. I get involved in the discussion of the film only because the hyperbole over it by people like yourself Kurt really surprises me. Like I said in the other thread,
had I been locked away for the last decade and never seen the work of the Farrelly Bros, Rickey Gervais, Tom Green, South Park maybe I would look at O&R as some astute comedic revelation, making a story without a likeable lead, transgressing taboos and going for a comedy of discomfort.
its just par for the course right now and strip away all of the excesses it revels in and you have the most formulaic and painfully dull story barely holding up the gags. The film is a gag depository, nothing more.
April 16, 2009
It’s there sir jorge, but we’ve seen this sort of thing in Borat, (as well as Sideways, Fight Club, Bad Lieutenant, Velvet Goldmine, The Brown Bunny and most recently Watchmen). I guess if the internet has to burble, I’d rather it be about date rape than penis, I’m all for equal opportunity nudity in movies….
April 16, 2009
and 100% agree with Phil on this:
“Because Hill couldn’t figure out a way to make something that looked any different from the average Adam Sandler movie, he wound up making a movie whose point seems to be to raise the acceptable level of mayhem for Adam Sandler movies.”
thats all I got out of it too. At least when Borat came out its psuedo-documentary reality-tv performance art justified the praise of it being more than just funny, but something new and seismic in the realm of comedies.
and yet again, the lingering visuals of the naked man in O&R just feels like a been there done that continuation of the naked fight in Borat.
the bar on taste has long been broken, and its a matter of did it make you laugh, and maybe did it earn the laugh?
April 16, 2009
Why can’t you say shit like this on the Cinecast so we can use it as the title?
“I guess if the internet has to burble, I’d rather it be about date rape than penis.”
April 16, 2009
article read. good.
debate = seems way too recycled from other thread. if someone wants to cut and paste for me and save ten seconds so I too can chime in just for the sake of being heard, please do so
April 16, 2009
Other Thread?
April 16, 2009
I really did like O&R, and I think Jody Hill and his crew are great. I just don’t think I hold it on a pedestal as a piece of groundbreaking, studio shaking, edge riding material. I’m in agreement with Rot for the most part. It’s got some good gags and was a refreshing watch. Eastbound and Down is 100 times more aggressive and challenging.
Kurt: I’m wondering if you’d agreet hat you seem to be easily impressed by films that either have a meta element or purposely go against the grain in some fashion. I guess this is where your idea of pandering comes in. If a film gives the audience what it wants, it’s pandering. The reason I don’t like this criticism is because different films are made for different audiences. Norbit is made for a certain crowd as Dogville was made for a completely different crowd. Both movies pander to the people they’ve been made for. It’s very easy to decide to go bleak rather than hopeful, and that decision, for me, is not what makes a great movie. In your post, you write off the apatow/ferrel & mackay comedies as though they’re working on some infantile level in comparison to Observe and Report. It seems to me you’ve simply been persuaded by the idea of this ‘brave’ studio picture that, if you manage to look past some of the shocks, isn’t that far off from the stuff being produced from either of those camps. I just think a challenging film does more than simply deciding to go ‘this way’ rather than ‘that way’, and O&S at times felt like it simply went ‘that way’.
All of this talk about a studio film that pushes so many buttons: Shouldn’t we be commending the studio for taking a chance on it rather than the people doing the button pushing? Afterall, there have been MANY people who have pushed much more controversial buttons in more astute ways in the past.
April 16, 2009
In addition, I fully admit that I am easily impressed by the combination of visuals and good music in films. But I think that’s because I watch movies from a visual and emotional aspect first and foremost. Not an intellectual one.
April 16, 2009
“Kurt: I’m wondering if you’d agree that you seem to be easily impressed by films that either have a meta element or purposely go against the grain in some fashion.”
Yes! I agree with Kurt 90% of the time, but every so often he pulls the Southland Tales card and the justification for why it is considered a good film is about meta aspects of the film more so than qualities inherent to the story itself, and at least how he is articulating his love of O&R, it comes off seeming like another one of these situations. Now you did say you thoroughly enjoyed watching the film, you were riveted to the story, so I don’t doubt your enthusiasm for the film, but its your justifications that give me pause.
as for Jay’s comment on pandering, I think there are few things at work that you are conflating:
1) what does the film want to say and who is its intended audience?
2) how well does it achieve its goals?
3) how do I feel about it?
SO even if a film aspires for an audience it perceives as lets say, accustom to simplicity, and that audience responds in kind favorably to the film, even though that is a reciprocal kind of relationship where no need of ‘pandering’ need be made, we, when talking about films, do not talk usually as historians about things in a third person sort of way… we inevitably want to express our feelings about what has happened. From our perspective something can be pandering, just like if we overheard a conversation between two people who were ignorant of most things and the persuasive techniques of one kid to another came across to us as juvenile or pandering you would be justified to think that from your perspective.
There is no mean distinction of what is pandering, its a relational term, and I admit we do throw it around too loosely supposing our perspectives to be allied with a consensus that can sneer openly. But we all know, or should know that some things do pander, if only in relation to our sensibilities of how something should operate.
April 16, 2009
context only gets you so far, our good sense eventually needs to come out and call a thing for what we suppose it to be.
Even though Bill O’Reilly or Paul Beck pander to their Fox TV audiences and its a reciprocal relationship, doesn’t mean we as a third party cannot call them out on their behavior.
April 16, 2009
I really don’t want to get into a debate about pandering, but just quickly:
I realize what pandering is, what it means, why people say it. I just think it is a weak statement because it is too general. For example, here are a list of films I think could be considered ‘pandering’:
Hot Fuzz, Sean of the Dead, Funny Games, Cars, Armageddon, Dancer in the Dark, The Condemned, Doomsday, The Transformers, Independence Day…
These are movies I like AND dislike, but they all could be considered as ‘pandering’ based on the conversations I’ve read around here. It also seems this could be a positive or negative thing, depending on who’s doing it. If Lars Von Trier panders, it’s brilliant. If Michael Bay does it, it’s garbage. What’s missing? The meta!! I think Bay should just say his movies are all meta. They’re blockbusters commenting on blockbusters. Problem solved.
Here are two interesting definitions:
1. To provide gratification for others’ desires
and
2. To cater to the lower tastes and desires of others or exploit their weaknesses
I think the first one is most suitable when discussing films. Yes, some movies strive to please to a fault. But I feel as though the second definition is generally the intent, which bothers me because it assumes the user’s taste/intellect/opinion is superior to that of the ‘lowest common denominator’. In short; it just sounds elitist.
April 16, 2009
thats Glenn Beck rot, and I wish I didnt know that.
April 16, 2009
Kurt’s list of criteria when watching a movie:
Do I care what happens next? (From Spartan to Kiss Me Deadly to The taking of Pelham 1-2-3)
Am I washed over with the feel and texture of the movie? (From Days of Heaven to The King and the Clown to The General to Once Upon a Time in the West)
Is it engaging on a level that makes me re-evaluate pre-conceived notions on something? (From The 400 Blows to Glengarry Glen Ross to Gummo)
Make my imagination soar (From Contact to
Are they exposing me to something that I never knew or cared about before? (Fast, Cheap and Out of Control)
Interesting and unique characters or geography (Happy-Go-Lucky, Naked, The Searchers)
Is this a movie or idea that I would never have thought possible? (Primer, 2001,
Is it playing with genre expectations/conventions in some new or exciting way? (Memento)
Are the images subjective of the overall experience of the movie (I like POV, weird fades, Snorri Cam, Paul Greengrass etc. (Yea, I like Requiem for a Dream, Seconds, & Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!)
Offer an experience I could never have (Eastern Promises to The Abyss to Punishment Park
Show Me something new. (Waking Life to Dersu Uzala to 28 Weeks Later, The Sheltering Sky)
Show me something old made fresh and new. (Seven, Out of Sight, Flirting With Disaster)
Entertain the shit out of me (Singing in the Rain, Cat Ballou, Near Dark)
Bonus points for ironic uses of musical cues. (Dr. Strangelove to An American Werewolf of London)
Bonus points if it makes me cry without feeling too guilty about manipulation. (Nights of Cabiria to Before Sunrise to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
Extra bonus points for making me cry while making me not feel guilty for being manipulated (From Dancer in the Dark to Barry Lyndon to In The Mood for Love, Grave of the Fireflies)
And yea, if I’m going to get pandered to, it better be sweet, sweet genre goodness (Shaun of the Dead, They Live, Gremlins 2, Day Watch)
Drop my Jaw! (From Audition to SPL to There Will Be Blood to Taxi Driver, The Heart of the World, toWhere The Wild Things Are)
As David Mamet once said, Great movies should be both surprising and inevitable.
As Pauline Kael said, Great movies are rarely perfect movies
As Jean Luc Goddard Said, All you need is a girl and a gun
As Billy Wilder said, If there’s anything I hate more than being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.
As Robert Coover said, The Miracle of artifice is miracle enough!
And as the priest in Dead Alive said, I kick Arse for the Lord!
April 16, 2009
Oh, and since I really didn’t answer your question, yes I love Meta, I love 4th wall breaking, and I love Quentin Tarantino movies.
April 16, 2009
thats quite a calculus you got there Kurt. I would agree with most of them.
Glen Beck, of course, how could I forget our generation’s McCarthy.
and Jay, I agree there is a danger of just wrapping meta around any piece of shit and suddenly it is untouchable… its that sort of thing I want to avoid. If we are going to talk with any sense in a public forum, we need to own up to our personal feelings about a film as the motivating force of anything we say.
‘I do not see what is; what is, is what I see’ Remy de Goncourt
you Kurt just happen to see a lot more meta than I do
April 17, 2009
I’ve never seen the problem if something makes you think. Even a total piece of garbage can be (somewhat) redeemed if it lends to ‘possibility’ or ‘ponder-able.’ I disagree with the notion of “You can’t polish a turd” because camp can be a lot of fun, from Show Girls to The Apple. It’s the relentlessly mediocre films that bother me most.
My time has never been that valuable, so thinking on the significance of how Charity is expressed and evaluated in Spike Lee’s THE MIRACLE OF ST. ANNA or how modern parenting and societal value is echo-chambered in HORTON HEARS A WHO is as good a use of it as anything else.
April 17, 2009
oh I am not saying you can’t defend something you feel, but I guess to adequately choose your battles because otherwise if you are willing to polish turds you have nowhere to stand when challenging the turd polishing of others, and then we are all happy turd polishers where nothing can be challenged, and that is kind of boring.
our reputations precedes us here. If you are going to bash Iron Man for pandering, than you should be able to keep to the same standards of persuasive argument when confronting your own justifications for liking something.
I’m fine with crazy theories but they should also be beholden to scrutiny, and Jay’s point of indiscriminately applying meta arguments onto any old film can make any conversation about the quality of a film useless if there cannot be some basis for the relative authenticity to the claim.
April 17, 2009
It’s not the poison, It’s the dose.
If Observe and Report is essential a regular Adam Sandler movie, they’ve upped the dose to the point where things become interesting.
On this: “I’m fine with crazy theories but they should also be beholden to scrutiny, and Jay’s point of indiscriminately applying meta arguments onto any old film can make any conversation about the quality of a film useless if there cannot be some basis for the relative authenticity to the claim.”
Who does this? People only do this because of what you talk about Rot, that is something intangible intrinsic in the film experience provided the passion to do so. Nothing wrong with that.