Metacritic reviews

The superb character actor Celia Weston (In the Bedroom) is truly breathtaking as Ronnie's boozer mom.

Observe and Report is the rare "action-comedy" (almost always a muddled hybrid) that earns its cathartic climax. The blood is real because the psychosis is real. But somehow--the magic of comedy--it's also uproarious.

You can't root for Ronnie. You can't identify with him. You can't hope he gets the girl – any girl. But you may want to look on with stunned fascination as he ticks away, ready to explode.

Funny as hell.

Ronnie is more complex, and much scarier, than the kind of self-deluding boob auds usually encounter in comedies of this sort. With the invaluable aid of Rogen, who's never been better, Hill sustains an impressive degree of tension between seemingly contradictory elements.

Broad but thin and more bleak than uproarious--a humorously downsized homage to foundational '70s classics like "Dirty Harry" and, especially, "Taxi Driver."

Barring a Terry Zwigoff return to "Bad Santa" territory, it's hard to imagine a filmmaker embracing this dubious hero to the extent writer-director Jody Hill does.

There's about 10 good minutes out of 85.

Midway through, a character remarks as he leaves the scene of a takedown of Ronnie, "I thought this was going to be funny, but it's just kind of sad." The same thing is true about the movie as a whole.

Yes, the "Taxi Driver" parallels are intentional: Hill spells them out in the press notes, all but branding Observe and Report a Scorsesefied remake that reeks of stale Cinnabon.