As a capper to Women’s Writers week, a look at one of my favourite actresses: the magnificent Anna Faris, too often taken for granted. Here we look back at a back-to-back double feature in which she’s beyond fearless. Hollywood needs her ragged edge more than ever these days. With her upcoming appearance in the newest “Scary Movie,” it’s high time for a comeback.
This month, we’re looking at the unselfconscious work she did in the Happy Madison production “The House Bunny” and Jody Hill’s “Observe and Report.” The former is the best work of “Happy” stable director Fred Wolf, who came to life by directing this… let’s say, unconventional story of liberation. It flirts with retrograde attitudes like all the films produced under Sandler’s shingle, but between Faris’ winning optimism and newcomer Emma Stone’s commitment to learning how to live in her shadow, there’s a little more to this than meets the eye.
Nick Allen, former Ebert writer and editor, once wrote that Hill’s “Observe and Report” was the 2000s answer to Taxi Driver, in which Seth Rogen’s blackhearted fool learns to hate the law he so vehemently wishes to uphold. Hill’s comedies (“The Foot Fist Way,” which introduced the world to Danny McBride, “Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter”) are bleak glimpses into the heart of American masculinity at its rage-filled peak. Hill’s characters are walking around the streets of every city, and as we endure more and more of the Trump presidency, we see his cabinet fill with characters Rogen or McBride would have played for Hill.
But a movie can’t merely parrot reality, so the twists and turns that “Observe and Report” takes are productively ugly and fearlessly antisocial. It’s perfectly alright to recoil from the film, but I’d argue that its strongest moments come courtesy of the abrasive reality with which Faris underlines her role as a shockingly selfish small-town princess. She steals the film from under Rogen, to say nothing of greats like Patton Oswalt, Ray Liotta, and Michael Peña.
But that’s the point of this essay: Faris is an old-fashioned comedienne, unafraid of acting hideous while looking beautiful. She’s the Greek chorus of a culture choking on reality TV and streaming slop, and I think the time to acknowledge her gifts is now.
