But one scene in particular seems to be pushing too hard.
The scene involves Seth Rogen's character, delusional mall cop Ronnie Barnhardt, in bed with the women on his dirty dreams, Brandi (Anna Faris), the blondie at the makeup counter on whom Ronnie has focused his freaky lust. Brandi wakes up to slur the line, "Did I tell you to stop, motherfucker?
At dinner, Ronni had plied his date with Valium washed down with tequila shots to the point where she pukes and passes out. " Does that make the sex consensual and therefore OK?
But there's Ronnie on top of Brandi in bed, grunting away over her dead-to-the-world body.(Watch Peter Travers' video review of ) Ew? In interviews, Rogen has indicated that he thinks so.
This left holdovers on top of the combined DVD and Blu-ray chart for July 26th.
The Longest Ride remained in first place with 288,000 units / .64 million for the week, giving it totals of 788,000 / .39 million after two weeks of release.
What rankles is that he’s barely anything at all; a stereotype of a stereotype; a half-remembered punchline; a stomach with a moustache and wheels. In one scene, Blart is kicked by a horse into the side of a car, though as far as I could tell, none of those three objects was actually present for the stunt.Seeing Blart being kicked by a horse into the side of a car for real would go a long way towards restoring a sense of cosmic balance.What many people are missing is that, first of all, the very 'redemptive elements' that Ronnie achieves may just be in his imagination.It's open to debate, but (as friend and colleague Randy Shaffer first clued me into), there is evidence that the action climax and the mid-film drug dealer beat down were delusional fantasies.There’ll be a good time to tell him, she surmises: just not right now, when they’re about to take a trip to Nevada together for a security-guard conference at which Blart imagines he’ll be asked to give a speech. For around half an hour, Blart frets about his daughter’s blossoming friendship with a young waiter, spying on them unconvincingly; then, when both are kidnapped by an international art thief who happens to be ransacking the very casino in which they’re staying, he switches back into Mall Cop mode, tools up with Home Alone-like weapons from the conference floor (glue gun, pocket taser, et cetera), and trundles into action.In a film this reliant on slapstick, it’s disappointing how much of the physical comedy isn’t physical at all, but computer-generated, or at least augmented.