KNOCKED UP

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Universal Pictures
Grade: B+
Directed by: Judd Apatow
Written By: Judd Apatow
Cast: Katherine Heigl, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann
Screened at: AMC 84th St., NYC, 5/14/07
Opens: June 1, 2007

As “Knocked Up” prepared to hit theaters on June 1, reviews appear to be comparing writer-director Judd Apatow to Aristophanes, the father of comedy. ”Uproarious. More explosively funny than nearly any other major studio release in recent memory,” kvells Variety’s Joe Leydon. “On the short list of the best comedies of the last twenty years,” raves Erik Childress, one of the midwest’s most celebrated online critics. “A comedy classic,” blurbs Chud’s Devin Faraci, while Film Blather’s Eugene Novikov wonders “why there aren’t more films this sharp, this clever, this good.”

“Knocked Up” is not quite the sensation that my colleagues say it is, but given the way it sustains its comedic thrust for all of its 132 minutes, it’s no slouch either. My funny bone is tickled more by satiric tilts of a political nature like Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911" and Jason Reitman’s “Thank You for Smoking.” Yet “Knocked Up” has so many effective one-liners, visual gags, and characters who’d make anyone laugh just by showing their faces that it’s a must-see by anyone who appreciates solid foul-mouthed jokes, good pop-culture references, the ironic fun that arises from watching mismatched people’s missed communications, and most of all, the way we can all identify with these less-than-perfect souls and get a good, rollicking, periodically-needed laugh at ourselves.

Writer-director Judd Apatow, casting several of his favorites from his celebrated “The Forty Year Old Virgin,” centers the action on a couple so mismatched, so unsuited for each other, you know right away that only in the broadest possible comedy would they ever look at each other for more than two minutes. On your left, there’s the aptly named Ben Stone (Seth Rogen), a curly-headed, ethnic-looking stoner, unemployed, as laid-back as you can get, living in L.A. with three roommates even lazier than he. He has a perpetual 3-day growth of hair on his face, and he neither means to look as sexy with that fashion as Brad Pitt nor would he quite succeed in the attempt. On your right, blond, WASPish, Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl), a career-oriented TV worker on her way up, who has just been promoted to giving interviews on camera.

Celebrating her promotion at a chic L.A. night club, she meet Ben–again, one whom she ordinarily would not look at twice, but this is a comedy–gets drunk with him, winds up back in her pad for what looks like a one-night stand, and discovers eight weeks later than she is pregnant. Though the father-to-be looks like a guy whose profession will be designing a web site in which actresses appear nude, she is determined to have this baby and to get to know Ben.

The one-liners that have had their start from the very beginning of Apatow’s movie continue relentlessly. These include incidents involving the principal subplot involving the marriage of Alison’s sister, Debbie (Leslie Mann) and Debbie’s discontented husband, Pete (Paul Rudd). Though Pete has two lovely and precocious kids, he is regularly away on “business meetings,” is suspected of cheating, but his whereabouts prove to be an unusual surprise for Debbie, though his trip with Ben to Las Vegas show only that men will be boys. The women in the audience for this film will chuckle, convinced once again of their lifelong burden: they’re destined to put up with little boys who call themselves husbands, while the worst that can be said of the women is that they can at times be control freaks and overly emotional.

Side roles that are milked for gags include an assistant to a TV vice president who is envious of Alison’s career climb; a bouncer at a night club who hates his job, particularly the racial and age quotas that he is obliged to enforce against his will; and gynecologists who are themselves control freaks as so many doctors are, refusing to allow their patients to have much of a say over their own bodies. There is also a sentimental moment in which a prospective grandfather tells a disbelieving Ben that having the latter for a son was the best thing that ever happened to him.

The movie reminds me of a book just published in March, Benjamin R. Barber’s “Consumed,” about how adults are acting more and more like children, going to movies like “Spiderman” (which, by the way, is referenced several times in this film) and “Shrek,” playing video games, and buying junk. In real life Seth Rogen is twenty-five, his character old enough not to be spending each day toking up with his 3 stoner roommates, unemployed with little chance of making a living with his silly website which is not even an original idea but which would have intense competition for the buck. As stated above, only in a broad comedy would his character and Heigl’s be spending more than two minutes together. As my theater teacher once said, tragedy is about people acting better than they do in real life; comedy is about people acting worse. Let’s hope so. But stories of people acting worse than they do in real life are good for quite a few laughs.

Rated R. 132 minutes © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online