Week Of May 28, 2007 - Knocked Up Friday

June 1 , 2007

Knock Knock.
Who's Mediocre?

Movie Critic: You know how I know you are a middle-aged person who is so tired of studio movies that you will desperately overpraise a so-so film?

Other Movie Critic: How?

Movie Critic: Because you think Knocked Up is the best comedy you've seen in years.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And really, there is nothing really wrong with Knocked Up.  It is funny.  It is sweet.  It is well performed. 

What separates it from The 40 Year Old Virgin, Judd Apatow's industry changing comedy classic, is that its script is a structural mess.  This is the ultimate clock movie and Apatow loses his head of steam about three months into this misadventure.  He hits his stride in the first act when we realize that both the mother and father to be kinda want to make this work in a real way.  And he starts meandering into extraneous gags when he realizes that he needs a second act before he gets to do The Comedy Of Birth. 

Still, it's fun.

There is another big problem for the film, which is a critics' wet dream ... it's a movie for middle aged people, not teenagers.  I don't care how many pot smoking teens you can fit into a Volkswagon Bus, the man-children of The 40 Year Old Virgin are adults here ... and they have the problems of young adults ... and teens simply aren't going to go back to the theater over and over to see it.  You can split the teens, as The Devil Wears Prada did, attracting adults and a strong core of teen girls.  But a 15-year-old will laugh at 90% of this movie only because people are laughing around him.  (And no, this is not based on testing it with any teen who I know, am related to, or who lives in my cul-de-sac.)

Anyway ...

What worked so beautifully in T40YOV was that as stupid as the guys and their behaviors were, they fit.  What do guys working at Electronics Barn (or whatever name they used for their Circuit City knockoff) have to think about other than getting stoned, drunk, or laid?  Catherine Keener's object of affection was available to the oddly disconnected Carrell character because she was, in her 40s, a single hot grandma and mother of three.  And even The Virgin's quick explanation of why he is still a virgin rings true enough.

Here, almost nothing rings true in the bigger picture of the film ... though as individual jokes, much of it really does work.  So the audience gets to decide, do they want to laugh at a bunch of disconnected ideas about marriage, parenthood, relationships, and stupid guys in their teens and 20s? or do they need a movie that actually works as a movie? 

It's fair to say that Knocked Up has many of the strengths and weaknesses of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies ... too long, too complicated, not realistic, and leaving you wishing a few characters were dumped, versus lots of laughs, some cool ideas, fantasy realism, and leaving you loving a few of the characters enough to watch them again sometime soon.

In the end, Knocked Up is what you expect from "the other films" from some of your favorite comedy stars, from the Farrellys to Jim Carrey to the Stiller Crew and on and on.  Much of Knocked Up is an imitation of what Apatow already did in Virgin.  And his writing of a young woman who isn't his wife is way out of his range.  But it has people you like and gags that are funny and its too bad that it wasn't the masterpiece it could have been, because it was a great idea and could have continued to assert Apatow's role as the Kinky Capra who learned broad comedy mixed with gentility from the Farrellys, who picked it up from Sturges.

It's not really special ... it's just pleasant okay entertainment ... but it's still the best studio film of the summer so far.  Go figure.

E Me.

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