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The two-doofus comedy probably goes back to ancient times, so why not set it there? The always-funny Michael Cera and the frequently-funny Jack Black join forces like Hope and Crosby in an only intermittently-funny movie that is just a series of sketches set in ancient days -- prehistoric, Biblical, Roman, and Egyptian. Cera plays Oh, a gatherer, and Black is Zed, a hunter. They are pals who are evicted from their stone-age village and wander off, meeting up with Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac, and the residents of Sodom. In yet another "what was the MPAA thinking" moment, the film has been assigned a PG-13 rating, despite jokes about incest, circumcision, orgies, castration, and ingestion of human waste.

The juxtaposition of modern sensibility and prehistory provides some funny contrasts. Oh and Zed are amazed to see their first wheel and when they ride in their first vehicle they raise their arms as though they were in a roller-coaster, even though it cannot keep up with a guy strolling alongside. And then they get their first carsickness. Some things are eternal -- like insecurity with the opposite sex, bullies, and the bad guys having English accents. And it is fun to see a modern perspectives combined with ancient situations.

But more doesn't work than does. Cain does not just kill Abel; he pounds him -- and any potential for humor -- into the ground. It isn't enough that a pagan priest be corrupt and gay; he has to be hairy. The movie is too spotty to be comic and too listless to be heretical. There's no point to it, just a series of gags -- in both senses of the word.

I have no affection for this movie but I have to admit to a grudging admiration for its willingness to be awkward, intrusive, and disturbing. A stark contrast to the similarly-themed and similarly plotted Paul Blart Mall Cop of just three months ago, this could easily have been a raunchier take on the same easy targets -- mall shops, mall music, mall food, and mall shoppers as a proxy for an America that is soft in the middle and narcotized by things that can be bought by credit cards.

But writer/director Jody Hall (of the cult favorite "The Foot Fist Way") makes comic movies with so much edge they can give you a paper cut. He does not go for the easy laugh that makes you feel good about yourself, you know, the one that lulls audiences into thinking that their families are not dysfunctional, just quirky, and that their pain makes them authentic and charming. This movie is funny but it is upsetting and very dark.

The overall structure of the movie is very much like the mall cop movie of just three months ago, "Paul Blart." Both are about would-be policemen who take our their frustration with petty enforcements when they are not mooning over a pretty mall employee.

But where "Paul Blart" was cute and gentle, "Observe and Report" is harsh and bleak. There are no cheery pop songs on the soundtrack to let us know they are just kidding. And there is not much in the way of lessons learned or getting in touch with the life force. Seth Rogen plays Ronnie, a sad, lonely, and angry man who is borderline delusional. He lives with his alcoholic mother. He yearns for Brandi (a fearless Anna Faris), who works at a department store cosmetics counter. He bitterly resents Detective Henderson (Ray Liotta), who is assigned to investigate reports of a flasher who has been harassing women in the parking lot. In a subversion of the usual movie tropes, he decides to ride to the occasion and resolve the flasher case himself as a way of proving himself. But his instincts are skewed and he makes a series of poor judgments and expensive mistakes that are played for comedy.

Rogen, Faris, Celia Weston as Ronnie's mother, and Michael Pena as his second in command manage the difficult material well, but Hall is more adept as writer (and selector of esoteric songs for the soundtrack) than as a director. The tone may be even more harsh than intended just due to an uncertain control of narrative and character. Hill says he was inspired by Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" and "King of Comedy," but he needs to do a bit more observing and reporting of his own to make sure he understands what makes those movies work.

"The Goods" is an unabashedly outrageous comedy about a team of hard-charging, harder-living, hardest-partying "mercenary" car salesmen who go from town to town for short-term sales promotions, racking up huge sales numbers, eating take-out, going to strip clubs, getting wasted, and having sex. They like to talk about how they don't break the rules, but they bend them pretty far. They have each other's back and don't trust civilians (anyone who has settled down in one place). They behave immaturely but they think a lot of themselves, and we know this because they tell us. In very graphic terms.

I know what you're thinking: Apatow, Sandler, or Ferrell?

It's Ferrell (whose cameo is one of the movie's highlights). Will Ferrell's production company is behind this movie, which explains how it manages to be both nasty and genial. Jeremy Piven tweaks his "Entourage" character as Don Ready, a guy who can talk his way into or out of just about anything, including not just being allowed to smoke on a plane but being cheered by every passenger and flight attendant for each puff. Farrell regulars David Koechner, Rob Riggle, Kathryn Hahn, and Craig Robinson are joined by "The Hangover's" Ed Helms and Ken Jeong, the "look, I'm not really the stiff you think I am" James Brolin and Alan Thicke, and the "I define what is cool" Ving Rhames.

Humor can serve many purposes, and one of the most enduring is the chance to see someone say and do things we are not allowed to, and then get away with it, and then not get away with it. The guys who say offensive things are not as bad as the guys who do offensive things but are not manly enough to be profane. And that is the foundation of this film. It's Ferrell's viral sensation "The Landlord" made with (chronological) adults. This is slash and burn, shock and awe comedy and it's cheery outrageousness makes enough of it work to, in Don Ready's terms, make the sale.

"Funny People" combines two very different movies. The first is a typically crass, shallow Judd Apatow production, saturated with childish sexual antics and slapstick humor. The second is a dark, self-aware examination of a painful and ultimately meaningless life. What starts out as an intriguing dance between these two different themes ends up as a brawl in which crass and shallow wins by a TKO in the 23rd round.

In the first few minutes, we witness the transition of George Simmons (Adam Sandler) from a happy kid clowning around with prank phone calls and practical jokes to a wildly successful comedian and movie star, standing alone like an emperor on the balcony of his huge mansion by the sea. His crude instincts have become the foundation of a vast entertainment empire. The transition from Sandler's grainy amateur videotapes with friends to his isolation above manicured lawns and swimming pools won't exactly compete with Citizen Kane, but it is not unmoving. There even appears to be a glimmer of irony at the way society rewards childish behavior.

We witness Sandler through a day in the life: he wades through crowds of adoring fans who gather whenever he walks down the street. He has obviously become experienced at shaking hands and wisecracking while keeping his distance. He wades through stacks of proposed scripts and lucrative offers that have been submitted for his consideration. He wades through piles of possessions that now weigh him down and no longer give him pleasure. It becomes clear to us that his glitzy life is hollow at the core, and Sandler is forced to confront that fact as well when his doctor tells him that he has AML, a form of leukemia, and is likely to die.

Sandler first flails around in response to this news, sometimes in persuasive ways. After a particularly bitter and unsettling performance at a comedy club, Sandler meets Seth Rogen as Ira Wright, a young and aspiring comedian who works in a delicatessen and wants nothing more than to become a comedy star like Sandler. Sandler is reminded of his younger, purer days and takes Rogen under his wing as a joke writer and valet. Their adventures together take up most of the story. We see Sandler's lavish lifestyle as well as his dark vices through the wide eyes of Rogen and occasionally we even care about which one of them will transform the other first.

At Rogen's instigation, Sandler revisits his past, talks with his estranged family and friends, and even reaches out to the one true love of his life, the girlfriend who left him years before because he cheated on her. The former girlfriend, Laura (Apatow's wife Leslie Mann) is now married to an Australian businessman (Eric Bana) and has a family life with two delightful daughters (played by the children of Apatow and Mann).

This movie is more interesting than typical Apatow fare and even has some good moments, but it cries out for an editor. It becomes less satisfying as it progresses (and it progresses for a long, loooonnnnng time).

Apparently, Apatow is only able to go so deep before resorting to his former self. At one point, Rogen yells at Sandler, "you didn't learn anything from a near death experience! You are worse than you were before!" Words for Apatow to ponder.

Sacha Baron Cohen is back, and once again he has created an outrageously offensive character from another country who crosses the ocean to interact with unsuspecting Americans so that we can laugh at their reactions, which range from befuddlement to extreme discomfort to outrage. But this time his scope is narrower, his character is shallower, and his meanderings are more random. His shtick is getting tired.

This time he plays Bruno, a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista who decides to come to America to seek fame, and his two themes are homophobia and the obsession with celebrity. But the homophobia is not as virulent as the worst revelations of "Borat." When he goes camping with some good old boys, they roll their eyes and resist his efforts to bait them -- until he takes off all his clothes and tries to crawl into one's sleeping bag. The preachers who talk with him about gay conversion do their best to be sincerely patient with his questions. Even the boot camp sergeants barking at him to make his bed and drop and give them twenty handle his insubordination -- and his designer additions to the overly "matchy-matchy" uniforms -- with reasonably good humor. It's a long way from "Full Metal Jacket." The scariest people he encounters are the stage mothers who want him to pick their babies for a photo shoot. As he asks them increasingly appalling questions ("Could your baby lose some weight?" "Are you okay with the baby riding without a car seat?" "Being covered with bees?" "Being crucified?"), they all look him in the eye and assure him that would be just fine.

Baron Cohen wants to provoke. The movie opens with an extended sequence of very explicit, highly athletic, extremely creative, but logistically improbable sex acts between Bruno and his "pygmy flight attendant" boyfriend. But he stops short, oddly cautious for once, and avoids confrontation with the virulent anti-gay forces of Fred Phelps. When he goes to the Mideast and sits down with representatives of Israel and the Palestinians, he sticks with silliness like pretending to confuse hummus with Hamas. Baron Cohen is in trouble if his outrageousness is dwarfed by Jimmy Kimmel (the capper here does not come close to the Ben Affleck song) and by real life (the take on obsession with celebrity does not come close to Michael Jackson's memorial). This is less what we expect from Baron Cohen that what we expect from Alan Funt or Ashton Kutcher.

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