After flocking to theaters for the PG-rated Paul Blart: Mall Cop, is America ready for the R-rated version? That will be decided when Jody Hill’s Observe and Report hits theaters this April (and before that, SXSW next month). Starring Seth Rogen in the Kevin James role, the later of “the dueling mall cop movies” has a new NSFW red-band trailer, and it has all the Blart-haters on the net (many of whom probably didn’t see the movie) all excited. Never mind if Observe will be better (it will be for those who prefer a lot of F-bombs in their comedies), the real question is whether or not a darker, raunchier version of a movie that’s already a box office hit will in turn be a flop. Especially in these times of speculating that audiences want more hopeful yet more mindless entertainment. Considering Observe seems almost like a bridge between Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Taken, which took the box office top spot away from Blart a few weeks ago, it’s plausible that this could actually be Rogen’s biggest hit yet.

After the jump, check out the trailer and what people around the blogosphere are saying about it:

• Cinematical actually got the trailer up late last Friday courtesy of their Moviefone partners, and Erik Davis summed it up perfectly (initially on Twitter): “Observe and Report is like if Paul Blart had a baby with Death Wish and that kid puked all over your brand new Nike sneaks.”
• Jeff Wells, who complains about how Rogen looks in the trailer, wonders if audiences will indeed by “mall-copped out” by the time of Observe’s release. However, a commenter at his blog smartly disagrees: “I think the majority of 20-somthings into Rogen’s shtick don’t even know what/whoPaul Blart is, that such a movie even exists, let alone made $100 million recently. And they don’t know anyone else familiar with Paul Blart. So i wouldn’t worry about it.”
• Linking to a complaint from one real-life mall cop about the inaccuracies of Paul Blart, Vulture wonders if Observe will “finally give us a realistic look at the lives of our mall-patrolling heroes.” “Probably not,” they answer, “but at least there will be way more hilarious swearing.”
• “This is gonna make as much money as that second Capote movie that came out that nobody gave a shit about,” writes Ain’t It Cool News commenter Garbageman33. “Sure, it may have nothing in common with Paul Blart other than a fat mall cop protagonist, but that’s all the Capote movies had in common too. Well, not the mall cop part. That was different.”
• At Defamer, S.T. VanAirsdale makes Observe and Report sound like The Dark Knight to Paul Blart’s Batman & Robin: “Rogen seems to have more substantial motivations than love and duty, and higher ambitions than retail rectitude. ‘The world needs a fucking hero,’ he growls, and we believe him, if only because of the existential terror anchoring every gag here. Who’d argue? Keep your $100 million and your script-ownership issues, Paul Blart; violent, cold-blooded, pitch-black revenge is no doubt the future of mall-security cinema.”