The CS! AFI Top 100 Movies of the 21st Century - So Far

There's 13 on here that I straight up haven't seen.  Not to mention the ones I saw once years ago and have hazy memories of.

I dont think we did a great job on this. Neverending is right; there is a severe lack of comedies. We don't even have Anchorman, or Hangover, or 40 year old virgin. Do we not even have Shaun of the Dead??

Comedies are hard to build consensus around.

I was serious that you can't account for taste in comedy.

Certain folks can't see humor in uncomfortable humor, or perverse humor, or poop jokes like in Bridesmaids. They are scolds and puritans.

From letterboxd, here's my review of Observe and Report:

Credit where it's due, the core idea of Observe and Report is inspired. Essentially, Taxi Driver as a comedy. This is a story of a delusional mall security guard (Seth Rogen) who becomes obsessed with stopping a flasher by whatever means necessary in a delusional fantasy to "save" his mall crush (Anna Ferris). I say crush, but it's really more of an obsessive lust than anything else. That description might seem somewhat Taxi Driver-esque, but the film's details heavily evoke Scorsese and Schrader's blood-soaked film (there's a Jodi Foster and Harvey Keitel analog and a shooting range scene uses the exact target Travis blew away). I can certainly appreciate such a unique take on a late 2000s comedy, but I can't say I found the film very funny. Throughout film, I laughed at Danny McBride's cameo, Ronnie doing "finger guns" at his police psych eval...and I think that's it.

The big issue here is tone. Despite being markedly darker and more satirical than the post-Apatow comedies of the 2000s, director Jody Hill doesn't direct the film all that differently. Moments feel like they're trying to endear a similar "lovable loser" vibe as something like The 40 Year Old Virgin, but Ronnie is so disturbed and violent he makes Travis Bickle seem downright wholesome. The film is in fact very inconsistent in how it frames Ronnie's violence. In some scenes the film is well aware of how dark Ronnie and his motives are, but brawls against gang members or cops aren't far removed from the farcical fight scenes in something like Anchorman. Similarly, the relationship between Ronnie and Amanda Faris's Brandi is...problematic. It does seem deliberately problematic mind you, in the same way Travis and Betsy's relationship was meant to depict a toxic male fantasy, but it doesn't land here. Neither character functions as a real person (especially Brandi) and the film's efforts to mine comedy from this subplot feel exploitative. One punchline in particular is just really distasteful.

On the plus side, I did really like Seth Rogen's performance. The guy challenges his usual affable screen persona in a big way here and nails the tricky balancing act of playing a character like Ronnie while still functioning as the lead of a comedy. I can see why he gravitated to this role, but the movie doesn't really live up to him. The filmmaking just doesn't much the subject matter and what we're left with is an occasionally interesting comedy, but one lacking in laughs that's mostly awkward to sit through.

D+



Added bonus, while I didn't like the movie, my girlfriend really didn't like it. I explained to her how my online friends had voted it one of the 100 best movies of the century and when I mentioned that The Handmaiden didn't make the cut but this did, she said: "Your friends are dumb."

I think Jody Hill is a genius and I absolutely love almost eveyrhting he's done. I own observe and report on blu ray. You didn't even mention the music. The cast is beyond impeccable with patton oswalt playing against type, ray litoas awesome, and michael peña as the lovable villain is incredible.

Did you see the foot fist way? I only ask because I think the tone is right where it needs to be.

During quarantine I caught up on the righteous gemstones as well which is another absolute treat from Jody Hill and not to be overlooked after an up and down first episode.

Sounds about right.  Don't for the life of me know why that suddenly got voted in.  There are several other Seth Rogen movies I would have much rather put in.

Pretty sure the first movie I lobbied for was The Wolf of Wall Street.

PG Cooper doesn’t like Joker nor Observe & Report. He’s really against people riffing on Scorsese. I hope Tarantino rips off Scorsese so we can expose him as a hypocrite.

I hope Doomsday pairs us at the Film Club. Got my list ready to unleash on you.

Agreed, no idea why they didn't just include both cuts, it's otherwise a pretty nice BR.