'Observe And Report' (R)(out of four)

"Observe and Report" is an odd mix. Oftentimes funny, sometimes disheartening, and many times shocking, you're not sure to laugh or drop your jaw in total amazement at its outrage.

Seth Rogen milks the insanity to the hilt, stretching his comic, yet sadistic, muscles as a bipolar head of security at the generic Forest Ridge Mall. He believes his job is to keep everyone in line, from teen skateboarders to the kiosk lotion hawker who gropes customers at every chance. Underneath his fat boy surface, however, lies the heart of Travis Bickle (you remember, him, don't you? Think "Taxi Driver").

Rogen's Barnhardt is a madman, whose delusions of grandeur border on psychotic. When a flasher starts encroaching on Barnhardt's territory, he's ready to protect and serve, no matter what it takes. He gets especially fired up when the flasher targets Brandi (Anna Faris), the gum-chewing bubble-headed blonde who works (where else?) at a department store cosmetics counter. True to form, Brandi is the subject of Barnhardt's Jodie Foster-esque obsession.

Some sideplots include Barnhardt enlisting an elite squad of losers to combat the flasher and a turf war with an unforgiving detective (Ray Liotta), who dashes Barnhardt's dreams to carry a real badge. Barnhardt's insane interview with the police psychiatrist doesn't help either.

Some of the funniest scenes are between Rogen and Celia Weston, who plays the mall cop's drunken mother, and who has some of the best bits in the film. When she says she's going to clean up her act for her son, she promises she'll switch from whiskey to beer; that's the extent of her sobering up.

Michael Pena also brings energy into the film in his first big-screen comedy role as a lisping security guard who creates a cataclysmic moment in the film that ensures, if nothing else, that all hell will break loose.

Writer-director Jody Hill appears to have gone totally ballistic behind the camera as he unleashes a bevy of audience assaults including an extremely unfunny scene akin to date rape where Barnhardt has sex with an incoherent Brandi. The final scene of where a full-frontal streaker runs rampant through the mall and ending in a true shocker drops the final hammer.

If you were expecting "Superbad," be forewarned. "Observe and Report" looks like a Muppets movie compared to this bloodbathed, four-letter-word soaked, tome of sociopathism.