by Jason Daniel Baker

Created on: April 17, 2009   Last Updated: January 27, 2012

As head of mall security, bipolar, out of shape and downright weird misfit Ronnie Barnhardt (Rogen) has long been the scourge of juvenile shoplifters, loiterers, skateboarders and litterers on his "beat".

He has risen to the top, if one can really call a minimum wage existence of rousting teen delinquents "the top." But for a guy like him it is an impressive achievement that he has even managed to achieve sustained employment.

But he still has delusions of grandeur beyond his delusions of adequacy. They are not in the least bit diminished by his lonely guy's life living with an alcoholic eccentric mother (Weston) who raised him as a single mom.

"I thought this was gonna be kind of funny but it is actually kind of sad" is a line a character in the film uses in reference to Ronnie and it applies to his character arc.

In order to make his existence bearable (beyond what his powerful medication does for him) he imagines himself to be the equivalent of a real police officer. Worse are his delusions that his job will be a stepping stone to his becoming a real cop. When he meets and alienates a real cop (Liotta) we see fully how off the hook Ronnie really is.

He can be allowed this so long as he doesn't become a nuisance. Sadly he frequently becomes just that harassing a number of people in his mall who have done little or nothing wrong. He makes himself an addendum to the problems at the mall which include a serial flasher and a thief who steals more than any shoplifter might try to get away with.

He also manages to seduce the department store beautician Brandi (the always brilliant Faris). Let's be clear though. She would have no interest in anything to do with him if she did not feel she needed his protection from the gross flasher dude and he does everything he can to exploit that. She definitely wouldn't have gone to bed with him if she weren't drunk and on drugs. Wasted and bored while still trying to enjoy the bad sex Brandi orders him to continue the assignation. Little is done afterward to explore the circumstances surrounding the brief coupling.

This is a screwball comedy and generally stays within the boundaries of that genre. But that is not to say some controversy is unnecessary to the narrative. The character arc is meant to show that this guy is unbalanced and how dangerous (to the point of being darkly humorous) that can be as a concept.

But the really subversive thing here is the way in which the lead is allowed his delusions of heroism by everything

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