While walking out of the theater after seeing Knocked Up, two thoughts entered my mind. First, that director Judd Apatow is clearly establishing himself as a film auteur after only his second feature film. My next thought was that Apatow is the missing link between two other great comedy legends: Woody Allen and Kevin Smith. Perhaps it’s not often that you see these names compared, but Knocked Up proved that they are cut from the same cloth. On one end of the spectrum, Kevin Smith takes highbrow subjects like religion and sexuality and dumbs it down to intelligent adolescent toilet humor, while Woody Allen’s films always maintain a more dignified demeanor as they comically explore adult themes for the more adult mind. And stuck in the middle is Knocked Up, the raunchy yet brilliant new film from Judd Apatow.
I have to say that after Apatow’s fantastically hysterical 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up had a lot to live up and in many ways it does. Knocked Up follows the story of two opposites that attract by the simple fact that they are about to have a baby together. The father to be is the appropriately named Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) a carefree bum who spends his days smoking blunts with his slacker buds while they “work” on their Internet site. The mother to be is Alison Scott (Grey’s Anatomy’s Katherine Heigl) the motivated career girl who happens to work behind the scenes for the E! Channel. You can’t get more opposite than these two. The Wife Swap creators must be salivating at the possibilities.
Immediately after we witness a hilariously vulgar cameo by American Idol host Ryan Seacreast, Alison is summoned to her boss’s office where she is promoted to a red carpet reporter. This prompts Alison and her married older sister Debbie (Apatow’s wife Leslie Mann) to spend the night on the town celebrating. Alison and Ben meet, they hit it off, one thing leads to another and they wake up the next morning at Alison’s place. When they separate after breakfast, Ben thinks he will never hear from Alison again and rightly so. After insulting Alison’s job and confessing that he’s unemployed, what interest could Alison possibly have in Ben? Let’s face it, he’s no Brad Pitt. But that was before they knew about the baby.
When Alison finds she’s with child, she goes to dinner with Ben to tell him the news, which doesn’t exactly go over well. In the middle of this snazzy restaurant, the two bicker and then yell about whose fault the pregnancy is. This scene is poignant, realistic and surprisingly very funny. This is something you rarely see accomplished in films, at least to the perfection we see here. There are many scenes in Knocked Up that tread over similar territory of lesser recent films. For example, The Break-Up attempted to navigate similar material, but couldn’t tell the difference between pain and comedy. Watching that film, it’s as if a fighting couple is inherently funny. But Apatow’s has a knack for taking real moments out of life, keeping them honest while he extracts the humor from within. I have no idea how he does it, but some how he does.
Obviously, the humor of this film is at least half accomplished by Apatow’s uproarious and insightful script. Maybe the other half is this great comedic cast. Seth Rogen does a terrific job presenting us with an extremely likable loser who has a huge heart and only needs a little faith to become a great dad. Katherine Heigl (who I remember from her days on WB’s Roswell) also rises to the comedic challenges of her role. She can play serious when she needs to be serious and takes the comedic scenes just as seriously. There is also Alison’s sister and brother-in-law Debbie and Pete played by Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd. They are the married couple dealing with their own marital frustrations, presenting a perfect foil to Ben and Alison who are attempting to force a relationship on behalf of the baby. They are more than just sidekick characters though, as they each get emotional scenes where they relate the hardships of marriage to the attentive Ben and Alison. I’ve loved Paul Rudd ever since Clueless. He has such great comedic timing and it’s refreshing to see a guy that always steals the show, but seems to avoid hogging the spotlight. Leslie Mann is also great and really shows her comedic range in this film. On a side note, it is also fun how jam packed this movie is with pop culture references, from simply mentioning Spider-Man 3 to impersonating Jabba the Hutt’s tragic death.
Is Knocked-Up as great as 40 Year Old Virgin? Tough call. I’m such a huge ‘Virgin’ fan, it’s tough to turn my back on it so quickly. But I am sure this is a great film. It is raunchy and vulgar, but it is also sweet and tender. Where other raunchy films like American Pie use dirty humor for malicious and misogynistic ends, Knocked Up is one of the warmest feel good movies I’ve seen in a long time and so far it’s one of the years best.
A-
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