The Seth Rogenaissance

There's a lot going on with Seth Rogen right now. His new movie, Observe And Report, starts Friday — probably at many, many theaters near you packed with many, many members of coveted demographics.

He hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend, where the fact that he's lost a bunch of weight became one of the primary jokes.

While he's enjoying this svelte victory lap, he's also in theaters as one of the voices in Monsters vs. Aliens, in which he expertly portrays a blue gelatinous blob. (That may qualify as irony.)

Rogen has already made a lot of big movies — The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, Superbad — the list is lengthy for a guy who's 26 years old (who, incidentally, was a writer on the celebrated Freaks & Geeks when he was 19).

But we may only now be entering the Rogenaissance.

Slimming down and smartening up, after the jump...

 

Rogen's turn in Monsters has been well-received: anecdotally, most of my friends who have seen it agree that he's very funny in it, whether or not they enjoyed the movie. But his performance as the animated B.O.B. is a bit of a double-edged sword. He's strictly a supporting character, and his huh-huh-huh stoner laugh is doled out in very small doses, so it goes down easy.

Contrast that with his appearance on a recent episode of The Daily Show, in which that laugh becomes — at least for me — extraordinarily grating, even as the things he's saying are pretty great.

Could you tolerate an hour and a half of that, even when it's substantively funny?

But if you watch the trailer for Observe And Report, rather than playing a guffawing buffoon (as he did in Pineapple Express and Knocked Up), he seems to be playing a deadpan buffoon.

And in Funny People, his upcoming movie with Adam Sandler, he doesn't seem to be playing a buffoon at all. Imagine that. (Warning: That trailer gives away what seems to be an awful lot of plot.)

If it holds, this is a good trend. The famously weedy "huh-huh-huh" should be for supporting characters only. Preferably in animated movies. Preferably short animated movies, because a little of that goes a long, long way.

Notably, back in his Freaks & Geeks days, Rogen played mostly wry, not dopey. That's wise, because his dopey quickly becomes too dopey. If the new frame he's sporting gives him more flexibility to play roles that weren't written as lumpen yuksters, then that's going to be good for him, because his lumpen yukster is ready for retirement.

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