Observe and Report: again with the naked man.....

I guess I'm just going to have to accept that manjunk is here to stay as a commonplace element in modern moviemaking.

There have been brief flashes of Bruce Willis and Kevin Bacon in decades past, but those were forgettable and forgivable. Now, though, it's right out in your face. I think it was "Sideways" that got this unfortunate ball(no pun intended) rolling. Then along came "Dewey Cox", and then "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," and more recently- and grautuitously- "The Watchmen".

Now this.

Even as I write this, I know what's coming. "Hey Steve, how come you don't complain about naked WOMEN in the movies?" I think the answer to that would be obvious, but since apparently it's not, I'll go ahead and tell you why: I'm a heterosexual man, dumb ass. I mean, I'm fuddy-duddy enough to think that nudity should be scarce in movies to begin with, but if you have to flash me some skin, make it soft and supple and feminine. Not hairy and mottled and dangly.

"Hey Steve, great commentary, but can you review the movie now?" Oh shoot, yeah, sorry, I was momentarily distracted by penis.

In this year's second offering of the mall-security genre, and unfortunately the lesser of the two, Seth Rogen hands us what is sure to become his obligatory "Oh jeez, I wish I never made that movie" movie. Every comedic actor has to make one of these at some point in his life. (Pauly Shores actually made a full career out of it.)

Now that Seth has this out of the way, we can just forget it ever happened and wait for something better to come along from him. But in the meantime, I think it suffices to say, when your movie is worse than "Paul Blart, Mall Cop," your movie sucks.

Here's a rundown of the story: Seth Rogen plays a mall cop whose moment of possible glory comes when a parking-lot flasher exposes his crotch to Rogen's love interest, the little blonde slut who works the make-up counter. It's loaded with predictability, mistimed jokes, and a distracting soundtrack that takes the punch out of what could have otherwise been a couple of good gags. The story line is formulated. The characters are flat. I've seen better comedy on public-access television.

The culmination of this disaster film is the only part of the movie I actually laughed at; Rogen's climatic foot-chase of the perp, dangling and exposed, through the shops and between the kiosks of his former mall-cop beat.

When the penis-scene is what I rate the best scene of all, you know the movie has to blow. (Again, no pun intended.)

I give this movie a 4 out of 10. The 4 is for the effort; I think they honestly tried to make a funny movie here. But they ultimately failed.