Unlike Paul Blart: Mall Cop, which played a similar idea for belly laughs, this mall-based comedy is something of a disturbing oddity. It follows a thuggish, bipolar security guard (played by the usually lovable man-child Seth Rogen) as he wages a one-man war against a flasher who's terrorising his workplace. At first sight, it looks like just another gross-out movie - Rogen's oafish and obnoxious antihero woos alcoholic cosmetics girl Brandi (a permanently dishevelled Anna Faris) while in a battle of wits with Ray Liotta's hardened police detective. But director Jody Hill isn't content with simple laughs and pushes the taboo-breaking gags (including a jokey reference to date rape) so far that they end up leaving a bitter aftertaste. Misanthropic and mean-spirited, Observe and Report turns out to be an unsettling anti-comedy that might have benefited from some restraint, much like its troubled hero.

Mall security guard Ronnie Barnhardt is called into action to stop a flasher from turning shopper's paradise into his personal peep show. But when Barnhardt can't bring the culprit to justice, a surly police detective is recruited to close the case.