Have you ever known a guy who routinely sets up a perfect joke and totally blows the punchline?

If that person were a movie, he’d be called “Observe and Report.”

After missing it in the theaters, I had high hopes for its release on DVD and Blu-ray several weeks ago. How can you go wrong with Seth Rogen and Anna Faris? They are two of the funniest actors in Hollywood. How can you go wrong with mocking mall life and poking fun at mall security? Apparently the way to screw it up is to forget you’re making a comedy.

Following a premise similar to “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” Ronnie (Rogen) is head of mall security with dreams of becoming a law enforcement officer. He’s awkward around girls he likes and has a crush on a cosmetics saleswoman named Brandi (Faris). He has bipolar disorder (not Paul Blart’s narcolepsy). He also must save the day by tracking down a burglar who is robbing the mall blind and stop a flasher from harassing shoppers. (And yes, you see all of the flabby old flasher’s junk.)

When Brandi is flashed, Ronnie totally goes into cop overdrive to solve the case.

Enter Ray Liotta as a real detective. There’s a rivalry that never really makes sense between he and Rogen. I take that back. It makes sense; it just fails to deliver any laughs or character growth.

The greater problem with the film is that it takes itself way too seriously. The main characters don’t generate any sympathy. Rogen and Faris act like real people who are fairly shallow, base or disturbed–not funny, self-deprecating characters who are shallow, base and disturbed.

They aren’t playing the roles to their usual comic effects. Faris isn’t the sweetly ditzy and loveable girl she usually plays. Here she’s a mean-spirited party girl who is extremely self-centered. Rogen isn’t his usual wry-teddy-bear-with-its-mind-in-the-gutter self. He’s unnecessarily cruel and violent for no real reason. Liotta, like everyone else, is playing this movie straight. If this were a police drama, he’d be great. The only trouble is, this isn’t a drama. Nonetheless, I don’t think it’s Liotta’s fault; he’s earned some comic chops in movies such as “Wild Hogs” and TV appearances on everything from “Frasier” to “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

To his credit, Michael Pena is the only one who plays for laughs, but, remarkably, that makes him seem way out of place in this film.

Despite a script loaded with great joke set ups (stereotypical and predictable as they are), almost no one pulls the trigger on the punchline. There had to be at least 100 jokes where no one delivers the funny. The chaos and absurdities escalate like a comedy should, but because everyone is playing it so straight, those jokes never really land.

Sometimes when a movie with an all-star cast hits the skids you don’t know who to blame. Was it the writer? Was it the director? In “Observe and Report” the assignment of laying the blame gets easier. It was written and directed by one person: Jody Hill. Mr. Hill is still a rookie with only the hit show “Eastbound and Down” and “The Foot Fist Way” to his credit. Let’s hope “Observe and Report” was a good learning experience for him.

After watching previews for “Observe and Report,” I never in a million years would have thought I’d say this, but “Paul Blart” was definitely the superior mall cop film of the past year.

Be that as it may, if I worked in mall security for a living, I’d be pretty upset with Hollywood these days.