What a strange comedy. If you were to go by the TV ads for Observe and Report, you’d expect something fairly typical out of a movie about a mall cop played by Seth Rogen: stoner antics, absurd vulgarities and a core of indelible sweetness. These things are all present, yes, but in many ways they are inverted. Two days later I still don’t know quite what to make of it.

Rogen plays Ronnie Barnhardt, head of security in a drab mall in New Mexico. Ronnie first appears to be the kind of too-serious buffoon that’s always hanging around in comedies about lame jobs, barking out orders to his subordinates and cowing store owners he dislikes with the unearned air of a drill sergeant.

The menace of a flasher and occasional robbery brings Ronnie into sharper focus. Ronnie thinks this is his time to shine as white knight to Brandi (Anna Faris), makeup counter salesgirl and all-around drunken flake… except he keeps getting checked by Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta), who is smart, capable, and legitimately intimidating: Everything Ronnie so badly wants to be. At least Ronnie can console himself with Nell (Collette Wolfe), the sweet girl who works the counter at the Toast A Bun.

And already you think you know where this is going. There are at least two comedy frames being built here: Loser Triumphs (guy with lame job and dreams proves himself, triumphs over skeptics) and Romantic Comedy for Dudes (a guy, the girl he wants, and the girl he should be with.) Factor in cameos from guys like Danny McBride (as “Caucasian Crackhead”) and Patton Oswalt (“Toast A Bun Manager”) and you’ve written the movie before the reel starts spinning.

You would be wrong.

Yes, the broad strokes are there, and those elements do more or less play out. But there is a darkness to Ronnie, and indeed to almost everyone around him. It’s as if writer-director Jody Hill (The Foot Fist Way, Eastbound & Down) examined the comedic archetypes that built Judd Apatow’s empire and considered the implications of that behavior in the real world.

Consider Ronnie’s fascination with Brandi. He calls her “the most beautiful woman in the world,” something you’d expect to hear from a smitten teenager and not a 30-year-old man. Funny, or delusional?

Ronnie finally scores a date with Brandi. He takes her out, casually pops a pill, and once Brandi spies the bottle he gives it to her and says he’s done with them. We later find out Ronnie is bi-polar, and he’s just taken himself off his meds. Funny, or troubling?

After a bout of drunken, distinterested sex, Ronnie is convinced he’s in love, while Brandi’s already forgotten about him and moved on to the next guy. When Ronnie gets the news, he screams at her and smashes the glass makeup counter in front of a dozen horrified onlookers.

Funny, or dangerous?

And so on. In Ronnie, Hill and Rogen have created a protagonist who’s taken the “lovable” out of “lovable loser” and become something quite a bit different. Here is a comedy about a guy going after his dreams, and it’s hard to imagine a worse scenario than him doing exactly that. Ronnie shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a gun and a badge.

And, on some dim level, Ronnie knows that. Many of the characters do. The result is a comedy with genuine laughs, but there’s a stronger undercurrent of ambivalence throughout. Observe and Report is a movie about “broken” people, but not people broken in the genial or abhorrent ways typically depicted in movies both mainstream and independent. They are ill-equipped to deal with life but not altogether helpless. They are sometimes repellant but not entirely off-putting. They’re just folks, not fallen angels or misunderstood devils. Some are worse off than others.

That ambivalence works in Observe and Report’s favor. The expected story outlines are subverted in sometimes bold, sometimes quiet ways, and I found myself on uncertain ground. I was alert. And when the handful of genuine surprises hit, they hit like an atom bomb—shocking, out of nowhere, yet completely logical and sometimes hilarious. This is a rare thing in a comedy.

And yet every recommendation I’ve given has been qualified. Observe and Report is not altogether successful. It spends so much time subverting expectations that when it falls back on cliché it feels a little like Hill and Rogen selling out, and the tone—already in murky territory—suffers. Some of the laughs miss, and a few of the zingers (mostly from Ronnie’s mom) sound like they were imported from an earlier, more predictable draft.

But there is a deeper intelligence driving Observe and Report, some note of self-awareness lacking in most comedies. Rogen and Faris both draw this out by steering their usual style into subtler, darker territory. I hope we see more of it.