Disc:
Region: ALL
(as verified by the
Momitsu region FREE Blu-ray player)
Runtime: 1:26:18.631
Disc Size: 21,772,286,843 bytes
Feature Size: 18,522,482,688 bytes
Average Bitrate: 20.06 Mbps
Chapters: 24
Case: Standard Blu-ray case
Release date: September 22nd, 2009
Video:
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Resolution: 1080p / 23.976 fps
Video codec: VC-1 Video
Bitrate:
Audio:
Dolby TrueHD Audio English 1488 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1488
kbps / 16-bit (AC3 Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps)
Dolby Digital Audio French 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio Portuguese 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640
kbps
Dolby Digital Audio Spanish 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps
Dolby Digital Plus Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192
kbps
Subtitles:
English (SDH), English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, none
Extras
• Meeting-Of-The-Mall-Minds PIP Commentary with Seth Rogen,
Anna Faris & Jody Hill
• Basically Training - in HD (6:48)
• Forest Ridge Mall: Security Recruitment Video - in HD
(3:01)
• Seth Rogen & Anna Faris: Unscripted - in HD (7:38)
• Additional Scenes - in HD (27:11)
• Gag Reel - in HD (12:17)
• Digital Copy Disc
Synopsis:
At the Forest Ridge Mall, head of security Ronnie Barnhardt
patrols his jurisdiction with an iron fist, combating
skateboarders, shoplifters and the occasional unruly
customer while dreaming of the day when he can swap his
flashlight for a badge and a gun. His delusions of grandeur
are put to the test when the mall is struck by a flasher.
Driven to protect and serve the mall and its patrons, Ronnie
seizes the opportunity to showcase his underappreciated law
enforcement talents on a grand scale, hoping his solution of
this crime will earn a coveted spot at the police academy
and the heart of his elusive dream girl Brandi, the hot
make-up counter clerk who won't give him the time of day.
But his single-minded pursuit of glory launches a turf war
with the equally competitive Detective Harrison of the
Conway Police, and Ronnie is confronted with the challenge
of not only catching the flasher, but getting him before the
real cops do.
Comment:
The Movie:
Tragic or comic, we see ourselves as the hero of our
lives. It's true for you and it's true for me, and it's
certainly the case with Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen),
the lead Security guard at the Forest Ridge shopping
mall. Ronnie suffers from a number of delusions: He
thinks chicks dig him. He believes he is owed respect
from everyone even when he pisses in their face, which
is just about all the time. He confuses anger with
entitlement. And he believes he is BiPolar, for which he
takes Clorazapam (aka: Klonopin), a very spurious
treatment for same in the first place. His true
diagnosis, by the way, can be found on a very different
page of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental
Disorders: Asshole. Or, if you prefer: Travis Bickle,
but not nearly as personable.
Yet there is another side to Ronnie : He thinks he takes
his job seriously (which is more than I can say of the
actor who plays him most of the time). And this is the
funny part, since it is a cliché that if you can't teach
phys ed, you can always be a security guard at a
shopping mall. In short: what's there to take seriously?
Ronnie's enough of a bully to convince those other
security guards, Dennis (a scene-stealing Michael Peña),
and John & Matt Yuen (played by the twins, John & Matt
Yuan - very droll) to take their jobs seriously, too.
And what is their number one mission: to apprehend the
parking lot flasher who has been terrorizing
unsuspecting female shoppers and staff for the past
several days.
Ronnie lives with his drunk-out-of-her-skull mother
(Celia Weston) – think Mr. Joyboy's mother on booze
instead of food, and who always has an inappropriate
phrase of support for her son. And Ronnie pines for the
busty cosmetics salesgirl, Brandi (Anna Faris), who
alternates between controlled and uncontrolled hysteria,
except when she coked-out-of-her-skull, in which case
she alternates between controlled and uncontrolled
nymphomania.
At the far end of the mall rests – pretty much on one
leg – the one person in this farce with a shred of
humanity, Miss Coffee, or "Nell" as most people call her
(Collette Wolfe). She always has a kind word for Ronnie
despite his relentless spitting in her coffee -
metaphorically speaking, of course. My cousin, the
attorney, says Writer/Director Jody Hill sums up the
male/female puzzle just about right - at least it is
representative of both plaintiffs and defendants in the
civil trials he's seen over the past 25 years. Good
looking women, he observes, often make
disproportionately stupid choices about men.
So much for the set-up. The big second act of the movie
settles on Ronnie's most troubling delusion: that he
would make an ace police officer. And to this end he
stalks Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta), practices with
firearms at the gun range and applies to the local
police academy. You see, Ronnie believes that the only
good flasher is a dead flasher, and the same for any
other miscreant, regardless of their crime.
I shall say no more.
Image: 9/9
NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were ripped directly from the
Blu-ray disc.
The first number indicates a relative level of excellence
compared to other Blu-ray video discs on a ten-point scale.
The second number places this image along the full range of
DVD and Blu-ray discs.
Observe and Report on
Blu-ray
sports a pretty
good image with vivid colors, solid, noiseless blacks,
believable textures (faces, jackets, weapons), where
technical distractions are at a minimum. Grain is not very
consistent with artifacts making the image less smooth and
more blocky when scrutinized. Contrast is excellent helping
bring out the vibrancy of the colors which can tend to look
almost saturated and unrealistically brilliant at times -
but flesh tones seem accurate. The end results though are
less film-like but we are treated to surprisingly effective
transfer
considering the single-layering and modest bitrate. The
reasonably crisp visuals never cross the line to being
overly glossy. This is easy to differentiate from the
relative dullness of SD and viewers won't find much
dissatisfaction with the image quality - it supports this
comedy with unusually vibrant hues.
CLICK EACH
BLU-RAY
CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION
Audio & Music : 8/8
English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix runs a gamut not typical for a
comedy: there is some seriously realistic weapons fire,
especially on the shooting range, with plenty of slam and
reverberance. On the other hand, the surrounds are not
always engaged as expected. The music, which is often
deliciously chosen for the moment, sometimes opens the space
beyond infinity it seems. Dialogue is front-directed, as is
usual, but activity in the mall is not always supported by
sufficient ambient sounds, possibly to help us focus on the
main characters. It's a question of balance and judgment. I
don't object. I merely observe and report.
Operations : 6
The main difficulty with this disc is that the feature
commentary (or what we usually call a commentary) is only available in picture-in-picture mode from
the main menu. If you wanted to watch the movie and listen
to the commentary without benefit or distraction of PIP, you
couldn't. And despite what it says on the back cover, all
the extra features are in high def, not "480/1/p" – in
single digit bit rates to be sure, but HD nonetheless, with
better image quality than we would expect from even very
good SD.
Extras : 5
Being HD is a plus, though the offerings are
self-congratulatory in that who-gives-a-shit way that Rogen
and others of his ilk are famous for. In Basic Training
Rogen talks about how Ronnie channels his "rage issues" as
an armed security guard. The Forest Ridge Mall: Security
Recruitment Video is just that, but processed to appear as
if in a state of video mistrack. Seth Rogen & Anna Faris:
Unscripted is more off the cuff stuff with Seth and Anna
more or less in character. The Additional Scenes are worth
your time, I found the Gag Reel much less so – unless
something else is meant by "gag."
Recommendation : 7
So much for my thinly veiled attempts to disguise my general
lack of enthusiasm for much of what Seth Rogen does on film:
On one of the Extra Features he admits "I don't prepare that
much, I guess you would say." I must confess that Observe
and Report finds he and I on opposite ends of what qualifies
as funny. Rogen's fans are not likely to be disappointed,
though Ronnie Barnhardt is not your typical Rogen zhlob that
we have come to know so well from Knocked Up and Zack and
Miri. But Rogen aside, there is an unrelenting meanness
about the events depicted that I found far too much work to
get past and which neutralized the genuinely funny bits –
the ones I found so, anyway. So much for my reaction to the
movie. The image and audio quality are much better than
passable.
Leonard Norwitz
September 18th, 2009
