Starring Seth Rogen, Anna Faris, Ray Liotta, Michael Pena, Collette Wolf
Ronnie Barnhardt is head of mall security at Forest Ridge Mall. After a flasher runs around the parking lot, scaring mall-goers, Ronnie and his ragtag team of security vow to catch the perp and put a stop to his perverted antics. But after the flasher strikes again, this time exposing himself to Brandi, a make-up counter worker and the object of Ronnie's affection, and a mass robbery at the mall, the owner decides to call in a detective to get to the bottom of things. Feeling threatened, as the mall is his turf, Ronnie decides to tag along with the detective, making things only harder.
Frustrated with just being a mall cop and not getting the respect or a gun that he feels he deserves, Ronnie decides to pursue his dream of being a real police officer and enrolls into the police academy. He also gets up the guts to asks Brandi out.
Feeling on Cloud 9 with the delusion that everything is going great for him, Ronnie is devastated when things turn out to be not so. Although it may seem like he loses everything he had going for him, Ronnie still tries to make good on his vow to protect the mall from the flasher, convinced he will strike again.
Seth Rogen films are usually pretty fun for those that are accustomed to his type of humor. Most will be quite surprised to learn that while Rogen does the best he can given the material he is provided here, the end result is not what one would expect.
Ronnie gets treated like dirt by the majority of the characters in this film, save for the lone Christian girl who works the coffee stand and befriends him; the mall owner treats him poorly, the detective and the rest of the police force play cruel jokes on him and are just mean to him in general, his mom is always drunk and relies on him to take care of her even after she tells him that she's sure he's the reason his father left them, his best friend and second in command ends up using him, and Brandi is a complete jerk to him and only uses him for his medication that she uses recreationally with alcohol.
Granted, Ronnie's not an innocent character here either and he's got problems of his own (we learn he suffers from bipolar disorder), however no one deserves to get treated as bad as he does in this film. Just when it seems like things are starting to look up for him, everything gets completely stripped out from under him.
Sure, it had it's funny moments, but those were few and far between - the rest of this film left you feeling sad for how mean everyone was. Save yourself the pain and skip this Rogen film - it's not the comedy that the trailers made it out to be.
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