OBSERVE AND REPORT goes so far off the rails, one is almost tempted to do a critical salvage operation on it, to try to save it from its own inanities. But ultimately, this is one stink bomb that no one can defuse. So breathe deep, so as to never have to breathe it again.

How did this movie go so wrong? I actually think it’s because filmmaker Jody Hill is too ambitious for his own good. Or to put it less kindly, his ambitions far exceed his talents.

To his credit, Hill doesn’t want just another “lovable dolt” performance from the hottest comic actor of the moment, Seth Rogen. In OBSERVE AND REPORT, the Judd Apatow regular plays a mall security guard. But before you can say “Paul Blart,” Hill makes it clear Rogen’s no earnest Kevin James wanna-be. Rogen’s Ronnie Barnhardt is a semi-delusional loser, a bipolar sad sack who compensates for his failings by reveling in his visions of grandeur. He’s a self-important blowhard who insults others to make himself feel better and browbeats the cosmetic counter hottie into going out with him with the fervor of a stalker.

On some level, this has great potential, the makings of a black humor classic even. But Hill and Rogen can’t pull it off. As dark as Barnhardt may sound, Rogen still plays it for big laughs. When he interrupts a live TV news interview by correcting the reporter on his proper job title, we laugh at his rule-breaking, rather than cringe at his rudeness. When he bashes in the heads of a bunch of illegal skateboarders, we chortle at the spectacle – as we also do when he kills (presumably) a handful of threatening gang members. When he accuses a Spanish-speaking worker of being the mall’s resident flasher for no other reason than he “looks” guilty, the joke is more about Barnhardt’s dismissal of the need to understand Spanish than it is about his inherent racism. Rogen either doesn’t have the acting chops, or can’t contain his boyish appeal enough, to present a psychologically shaded characterization.

A better director could compensate for the failings of his lead actor by creating a strongly imagined world around him, a world peopled in such a way that it would provide a consistent contrast to the main character, a way to better focus attention. Instead, Hill presents a world every bit as garish and loony as Barnhardt. Anna Faris’ counter girl is such a pill-popping drunk that an apparent vomit-splattered date-rape is played for guffaws. Ray Liotta’s no-nonsense cop loses his temper to such a degree that he starts screaming at Rogen that he’s a “RETARD!” And Barnhardt’s fellow security guards are played by two overweight Asian twins and a lisping Hispanic closet thief. You couldn’t get a much lower common denominator for laughs. By these standards, Barnhardt is practically a regular Joe.

Hill has cited TAXI DRIVER as a reference point for OBSERVE AND REPORT and that’s not quite as buffoonish as it might sound at first blush. In fact, when Rogen intones, over a music bed, “I believe every man has a path laid out before him. My path is a righteous one,” you can almost hear Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle, with Bernard Herrmann’s music in the background. Equally to the point, Barnhardt has much in common with De Niro’s Rupert Pupkin in THE KING OF COMEDY. Pupkin is another social misfit whose grandiose ambitions belie the most fragile of egos. And yet, thanks to the consistent vision of director Martin Scorsese and the talent of De Niro, there’s never any confusion over how we’re to “take” Pupkin. There’s nothing cuddly about him. If Hill and Rogen had been equally clear and consistent, the “shock” ending of OBSERVE AND REPORT might have seemed more earned than just slapped on.

But the best film to draw comparisons with is Paul Thomas Anderson’s PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE. As with OBSERVE AND REPORT, Anderson’s film takes an established comic star, Adam Sandler, and turns his strongly defined persona on its head. There may be laughs in PUNCH-DRUNK but they have nothing in common with the laughs generated by the standard Sandler fare. Instead, Anderson chooses to treat Sandler’s man-child shtick seriously and then places him in real-world situations. The resulting psychological revelations about Sandler’s character are startling and invigorating. Incorporate those insights into Anderson’s deconstruction of the conventions of romantic comedy, and you have the makings of a comic masterpiece: PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE.

OBSERVE AND REPORT, on the other hand, can’t decide what to do with Rogen. It seems to want to cash in on his irrepressible goofball persona at the same time it wants to critique it. It wants to have its cake and eat it too and ends up getting neither. Barnhardt says at one point, “I thought this was gonna be funny but it’s actually kind of sad.” That’s a telling post-mortem for the entire movie. But it’s also so self-consciously reflexive that you have to figure Hill means for it to resonate. Too bad that resonance bites him.