Sunday, January 15, 2012
Adapt or die
By Edward Copeland
Brad Pitt, as far as I'm concerned, always has received a bit of a bum rap as an actor. Granted, he doesn't have the breadth of abilities of others in his generation such as Edward Norton or Philip Seymour Hoffman (who actually co-stars with him here in Moneyball), but when Pitt gets a role that falls into his narrower range such as in Fight Club or The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, he truly excels. In fact, the older Pitt gets, the more his talent grows and there hasn't been a better example yet than his performance as Billy Beane in Moneyball where he delivers his best work yet. It also doesn't hurt that he's working from an incredibly strong script by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin.
Zaillian and Sorkin's screenplay, with a story by Stan Chervin, was adapted from Michael Lewis' book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. While there have been many films about baseball and several I've liked a lot, Moneyball may revolve around the game, but it doesn't resemble other baseball movies though it manages to be just as compelling — if not more so — than other sports movies where the climax involves a Big Game. Bennett Miller helms Moneyball, his first film since his feature debut, Capote, six years ago. While I liked Capote well enough, Moneyball represents a quantum leap forward in quality for Miller.
Billy Beane works as the general manager of the Oakland A's and the movie begins when the team faced off against the New York Yankees in the October 2011 American League Championship Series. At the time, the A's boasted some talented up-and-coming players such as Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi and Oakland almost pulls off the win, but the Yankees prevail. Figures on the screen put the disparity between the teams in very stark terms: It isn't really the Yankees vs. the A's, it's $114,457,768 vs. $39,722,689. Teams with smaller payrolls just can't compete (especially once the season ends and the Yankees poach Damon and Giambi from the A's). As one sports radio talk show host comments, "It's like we're a farm system for the New York Yankees." I don't follow baseball, but that is a ridiculous disparity. It's much like the political system has become following the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.
Beane, once a promising player himself, pleads to the Athletics' owner for more money to try to level the playing field with the richer teams, but the owner balks. During a meeting with Cleveland Indians General Manager Mark Shapiro (Reed Diamond) to obtain replacements for his lost stars, Beane gets shot down at every turn by what he can afford. While he's there, he notices a young man (Jonah Hill) whispering advice that appears to be taken. Beane zeroes in on the guy and learns his name is Peter Brand. Brand advocates a different approach to team building. Instead of chasing star players who cost a fortune and may or may not deliver championships, Brand proposes following a statistical formula based on which players get on base most often, usually at lower salaries.
Oakland's veteran baseball scouts and his manager Art Howe (Hoffman) resist this new system and it falls flat at first as Howe continues to use the players the way he always has, ignoring Beane's suggestions. Finally, Beane makes moves that force his Howe to give his new player acquisitions to get game time. Eventually, the new method reaps rewards and the A's go on an incredible and historic winning streak. Even if you aren't a baseball fan, it's difficult not to feel the excitement when a home run comes at a crucial time.
The only criticism I had with Moneyball is that it dips a bit too often into flashbacks to Beane's life as a promising baseball player coming out of high school (It doesn't help that the actor playing the younger Beane doesn't look that much like Pitt). They could have made all the same points they make in those scenes in less time and without so much repetition and shortened the film's 133-minute running time. However, that's a minor complaint against an otherwise solid film.
Pretty much from top to bottom, the cast excels, including brief appearances by Robin Wright as Beane's ex-wife and Arliss Howard as the head of the Boston Red Sox. Hoffman turns in a fine performance as always, but he lays back since this isn't his movie and makes no scene-stealing attempts. Hill gets to show he's capable of playing a role unlike anything he's played before. He's been fine in most of the comedies in which he's appeared, most from the Judd Apatow Factory such as Funny People, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Superbad and Knocked Up, even if the movies' quality varied, but it's nice to see him given the opportunity to portray a completely different type of character and do it well.
Combining the screenplay and Pitt's best-ever performance proves ultimately to be the winning formula that makes Moneyball so compelling. Pitt (who also was a producer) never strikes a false note and the film rarely does either. Even though Moneyball tells a true story, I didn't know what happened in 2002 so the ending came as a genuine surprise, yet one that felt wholly appropriate — and not the way a fictional script would choose to finish its tale. That's another reason Moneyball belongs on the list of 2011's best films.
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Labels: 10s, Apatow, Books, Brad Pitt, Capote, Edward Norton, Jonah Hill, Nonfiction, P.S. Hoffman, Robin Wright, Sorkin
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Monday, May 23, 2011
Always a Bridesmaid
By David Gaffen
The new film Bridesmaids has been saddled with the unfortunate assignment of proving a movie centered largely around women can be funny, attract audiences across all ages and (more importantly) of both genders, and bring copious amounts of sexual and scatological humor, only this time, with girls!
The results are uneven — there are a number of huge laughs, notably in the scene where several of the bridesmaids-to-be erupt in a fit of vomit and diarrhea at a wedding dress fitting caused by food poisoning at an out-of-the-way Brazilian restaurant. (The movie takes place in Milwaukee, for some reason.)
It gets good mileage out of Kristin Wiig and Maya Rudolph, both from Saturday Night Live, as longtime friends who don't see each other as much as they used to, something that comes through after Rudolph's Lillian asks Wiig's Annie to be her maid of honor. This aspect of the story is mined well, along with some of the class resentments that seep through as Wiig grows jealous of her competition, Helen, played by Rose Byrne, who is swimming in money and isn't shy about showing it.
But what's worth considering is that this movie — which fits neatly in the group of so called "Frat Pack" movies that generally feature some combination of Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Adam Sandler, Vince Vaughn and a few others — is, like those movies, only partially successful and should cause us to remove the rose-colored glasses that tint our memories of the likes of Old School, Anchorman and other movies in this genre.
Judd Apatow (who produced Bridesmaids) is rightfully thought of as being at the center of a lot of these films, although his movies generally have more heart than some of the others in this group, and this movie — though over the top at times — shares some of those characteristics. It falls short of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, one of the best comedies (or movies) of the last 10 years, but slots in ahead of any of the other "Look at this wacky ensemble" movies such as Dodgeball, Wedding Crashers or Pineapple Express.
Those movies have grown in reputation over time, in part because of amusing set pieces and memorable moments. But most of the movies in this roughly 10-year time period were mediocre entertainment, enlivened by those few fantastic bits (the opening of Wedding Crashers, the climactic battle in Role Models) and weighted down with a lot of ballast — with enough juicy supporting turns to keep things interesting (Tim Meadows in Walk Hard, Jane Lynch in 40-Year-Old Virgin and, well, about everywhere else she showed up).
Which doesn't make Bridesmaids anything better or worse than this genre which it fits comfortably in. Wiig's Annie is in a bad place in life, and it keeps getting worse, and that aspect of the script is refreshing. She and the other women — particularly Melissa McCarthy, who serves the Zach Galifinakas/Stephen Root role of the hefty sidekick, but gets a few soulful moments that ground the movie — are given room to shine with gross-out material usually easily handled by men
But it has its problems. Goofy side plots, such as Wiig's British roommates, and her mother's (the late Jill Clayburgh in her final film role) penchant for attending AA meetings despite not being an addict, feel unfocused. That the movie seems on its way to making a nice chunk of change (it grossed $24 million in its first weekend, putting it on the path for about $60 million unless word of mouth pushes it further) is a testament to the pedigree of the producers involved and the marketing campaign as much as it is the script, which is good, but not great.
It's progress of a sort, one supposes — this isn't Sex and the City 2 — but it will take a few more movies in this vein before this appears to be a novelty.
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Labels: 00s, Apatow, Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen
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Monday, July 26, 2010
George Costanza's Dream Comes True in Cyrus
By Eddie Selover
A couple of years ago, watching Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, I was seriously offended on behalf of Marisa Tomei for her having to participate in some fairly explicit sex scenes. The problem wasn’t Tomei, who looks more devastating than ever in her 40s. The problem was that she was in bed with the last actor on earth who should be seen unclothed (even a little bit): Philip Seymour Hoffman. Though Hoffman was great as always, the physical disconnect between them made it impossible to suspend disbelief... she was acting all turned on by him, and man, that was some acting.
Now, three years later, here is Tomei cast as a “sex angel” to the lumpish, skeevy John C. Reilly in Cyrus. She hasn't had a relationship in years, the movie would have us believe, but she's attracted to Reilly. Uh-huh. To add insult to injury, she also plays the mother of the spectacularly bloated and unattractive Jonah Hill. The unlikelihood of either of these gentlemen getting anywhere near a woman like Marisa Tomei isn’t the main problem with Cyrus, but it was the one that irritated me the most.
Reilly plays John, a film editor who has been divorced for several years and lives alone in a messy apartment, eating junk food and staring at his computer screen. As with the heroes of so many of today’s slacker movies, whether mumblecore or not, John is a slovenly loser with no looks, physique, hygiene, money or career prospects… and who yet manages to have giddy, happy sex with a hot woman who responds to his sincerity, or basic decency, or something. Cyrus opens with John’s unbelievably non-acrimonious ex-wife Jamie interrupting him in the middle of masturbation; later he meets Tomei while peeing in some bushes. Are these the sorts of moments that bring hot women into a man’s life? Only in the minds of male screenwriters who have spent way too much time staring at their computer screens.
So John and Tomei’s Molly hook up, and things are going great until he meets her son Cyrus. Fat and beady-eyed, Cyrus is an antisocial lout who has an unhealthy Oedipal obsession with his mom and no intention of sharing her with a boyfriend. (Hill, by the way, looks more like the child of Danny DeVito's Penguin than that of Marisa Tomei, but let it go.) The first third of the movie is standard comedy-of-social-awkwardness as this situation is set up, but as John moves closer, and eventually into Molly’s house, Cyrus begins a passive-aggressive campaign to break up the relationship. For a while, with the handheld camera moving through the bluish darkened rooms of the house, it’s like a horror movie, and you half expect Cyrus to pop out with a knife like Norman Bates. Then for the last third, the movie makes another shift in tone, and goes all soft and sensitive as we see how much Cyrus is hurting, and he and John forge a tentative reconciliation.
This is one shift too many for the audience, whom I felt were ready for something darker and edgier. There are suggestions of an incestuous relationship between Cyrus and Molly — she spends the night in his bed when he’s upset, he uses the bathroom while she’s showering, etc. But these scenes don’t go anywhere, and Molly is ultimately portrayed as a sane, sweet earth mother who has evidently played no part in making her son a borderline psychopath. Like Mildred Pierce, her only sin is loving her child so much that she’s blind to what a monster she’s created. Or hasn’t created. Again, these are screenwriter contrivances — everything that happens in the movie is for an immediate effect and has no grounding in psychological truth.
The performers are left to make the movie work, and it must be said that Reilly almost pulls it off. He’s a very likable actor, maybe because of the glints of suffering in the little raisin eyes set too close together in his doughy face. We’re with him all the way, and when Cyrus begins his campaign of lying and manipulation, we want John to come up with some clever strategies to beat the little bastard at his own game. But although the movie makes a couple of feints in this direction, evidently the writer/directors Mark and Jay Duplass aren’t up to writing a battle of wits. In fact, much of the movie was improvised by the performers, and several scenes have that repetitive, vamping tediousness that improvisation gets when there’s no inspiration behind it.
Catherine Keener fares particularly badly — she has now officially tilted her head, squinted compassionately and laughed unexpectedly in one too many movies. She plays Jamie, the ex who dumped John several years previously, but still hangs around solicitously, trying to get him to socialize and find happiness in a new relationship. Uh-huh. Cyrus is like a loser’s daydream in which he doesn’t have to change a thing about himself: everybody loves him anyway. Even Marisa Tomei.
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Labels: 10s, DeVito, John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, Keener, P.S. Hoffman, Tomei
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Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Someone needs a trim
By Edward Copeland
In many ways, some movies need to be rated on separate scales: the number of laughs they produce and as a movie as a whole. Such is the case with Superbad, which like most recent productions coming out of the Judd Apatow comedy factory, contains a lot of big belly laughs. Unfortunately, great gags, even multitudes of them, aren't enough glue to hold together Superbad as a movie.
Apatow continues to build a repertory company of actors he loves to employ again and again from his TV days on Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, always adding a few new names to the troupe even as he hands the directing chores in Superbad over to Greg Mottola (The Daytrippers).
Look closely to see TV regulars or guest stars from the series such as Martin Starr, Carlo Gallo, Kevin Corrigan and David Krumholtz. Steve Bannos, Mr. Kowchevski on Freaks and Geeks, even gets to return to the profession of math teacher and Clement Blake, so memorable as the older party crasher in the "Beers and Weirs" episode of Freaks gets to play a similar role here.
The semiautobiographical screenplay was written by Seth Rogen and his longtime friend Evan Goldberg, so much so that the lead characters played by Jonah Hill and Michael Cera, even share their first names. In fact, Rogen and Goldberg began writing the script when they were teenagers. I wrote a novel when I was in high school, but it's locked safely in the attic. I'm sure it has some positive attributes, such as Superbad does, but not all things need to see the light of day or the screens of movie theaters.
Superbad follows a similar template to The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up by presenting truly vulgar comedy that almost makes you feel ashamed for laughing so hard at it and mixing it with a healthy dose of sweetness.
It also treads territory similar to films such as American Pie, though with a bit more success. In this case, the story follows a more traditional movie genre: teens trying to get laid. Seth (Hill) and Evan (Cera) are wrapping up their high school days and looking ahead to the separation college will force on them, since Evan has been accepted to Dartmouth and Seth will be stuck going to a state school.
Both are afraid of being separated, but neither is comfortable admitting it so instead they focus on final days of partying and girlchasing. That's basically the loosest of threads Superbad is hung on: A journey to procure liquor and get to a party where the would-be objects of their affections await.
Unfortunately, Superbad suffers from what Knocked Up suffered from and what The 40-Year-Old Virgin amazingly got away with: It's too damn long for this sort of comedy, so it inevitably sags at times. There really needed to be a strong editing hand to tighten the movie so the laughs were plentiful enough to make the whole thing work instead of ending up as a mixed bag.
Still, Superbad has two things that definitely are in its favor: Michael Cera and newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse.
Cera, so great as George-Michael on the much-missed TV show Arrested Development, proves that his skills as a straight man on that sitcom were no fluke. Cera shows signs of being able to give the best deadpan delivery of his generation (and probably several ahead of him).
Mintz-Plasse is a true find. Some stock characters such as the dumb blonde or the ubergeek have been used so often, it's still surprising when someone can put such fresh spins on the stereotypes to make them seem new again and that certainly is the case with Mintz-Plasse. While most of his scenes end up being with a pair of cops (Rogen, Bill Hader) that seem to belong to another movie, his energetic and delightful performance make it all worthwhile.
It's hard to make a clear call on Superbad: If you go expecting to laugh a lot, odds are you will. If you go hoping for a truly great comedy that also works as a film, you'll probably be disappointed.
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TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
In many ways, some movies need to be rated on separate scales: the number of laughs they produce and as a movie as a whole. Such is the case with Superbad, which like most recent productions coming out of the Judd Apatow comedy factory, contains a lot of big belly laughs. Unfortunately, great gags, even multitudes of them, aren't enough glue to hold together Superbad as a movie.
Apatow continues to build a repertory company of actors he loves to employ again and again from his TV days on Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, always adding a few new names to the troupe even as he hands the directing chores in Superbad over to Greg Mottola (The Daytrippers).
Look closely to see TV regulars or guest stars from the series such as Martin Starr, Carlo Gallo, Kevin Corrigan and David Krumholtz. Steve Bannos, Mr. Kowchevski on Freaks and Geeks, even gets to return to the profession of math teacher and Clement Blake, so memorable as the older party crasher in the "Beers and Weirs" episode of Freaks gets to play a similar role here.
The semiautobiographical screenplay was written by Seth Rogen and his longtime friend Evan Goldberg, so much so that the lead characters played by Jonah Hill and Michael Cera, even share their first names. In fact, Rogen and Goldberg began writing the script when they were teenagers. I wrote a novel when I was in high school, but it's locked safely in the attic. I'm sure it has some positive attributes, such as Superbad does, but not all things need to see the light of day or the screens of movie theaters.
Superbad follows a similar template to The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up by presenting truly vulgar comedy that almost makes you feel ashamed for laughing so hard at it and mixing it with a healthy dose of sweetness.
It also treads territory similar to films such as American Pie, though with a bit more success. In this case, the story follows a more traditional movie genre: teens trying to get laid. Seth (Hill) and Evan (Cera) are wrapping up their high school days and looking ahead to the separation college will force on them, since Evan has been accepted to Dartmouth and Seth will be stuck going to a state school.
Both are afraid of being separated, but neither is comfortable admitting it so instead they focus on final days of partying and girlchasing. That's basically the loosest of threads Superbad is hung on: A journey to procure liquor and get to a party where the would-be objects of their affections await.
Unfortunately, Superbad suffers from what Knocked Up suffered from and what The 40-Year-Old Virgin amazingly got away with: It's too damn long for this sort of comedy, so it inevitably sags at times. There really needed to be a strong editing hand to tighten the movie so the laughs were plentiful enough to make the whole thing work instead of ending up as a mixed bag.
Still, Superbad has two things that definitely are in its favor: Michael Cera and newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse.
Cera, so great as George-Michael on the much-missed TV show Arrested Development, proves that his skills as a straight man on that sitcom were no fluke. Cera shows signs of being able to give the best deadpan delivery of his generation (and probably several ahead of him).
Mintz-Plasse is a true find. Some stock characters such as the dumb blonde or the ubergeek have been used so often, it's still surprising when someone can put such fresh spins on the stereotypes to make them seem new again and that certainly is the case with Mintz-Plasse. While most of his scenes end up being with a pair of cops (Rogen, Bill Hader) that seem to belong to another movie, his energetic and delightful performance make it all worthwhile.
It's hard to make a clear call on Superbad: If you go expecting to laugh a lot, odds are you will. If you go hoping for a truly great comedy that also works as a film, you'll probably be disappointed.
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Labels: 00s, Apatow, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Seth Rogen
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Freaks & Geeks shall inherit the mirth
By Edward Copeland
Judd Apatow seems to defy just about everything one might hold true about certain forms of comedy. By and large, I subscribe to Jeffrey's 90-minute rule that comedies pushing their luck if they extend much past that running time, but Apatow provided a glowing exception to that rule with The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, the most I've laughed at a recent movie in ages. Then on top of that, he now seems to specialize in extremely vulgar comedies that, at their heart, hide family friendly messages: staying pure until marriage in the case of Virgin and now staying together for the sake of an unexpected baby in Knocked Up. Unfortunately, while Virgin manages to keep its momentum throughout its long running time, Knocked Up doesn't bear its extra frames as well, coming off as a bit flabby. Despite its need for some judicious trimming, it's still ends up as an entertaining way to spend your time.
One thing proving so special about Apatow's films, especially for fans of his great and short-lived TV series Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, is his penchant for bringing back his extended family time and again, making each enterprise feel as if you've been invited to the reunion as well. Seth Rogen, part of the great ensembles of both Freaks and Undeclared, gets the lead role of Ben Stone in Knocked Up, a stoner/slacker who believes that "weed cures everything" and lives off the dwindling proceeds of a postal truck accident with dreams of an Internet fortune made from a Web site that tracks nude scenes in movies.
Other Apatow alumni along for this ride include Jason Segel (also of both Freaks and Undeclared), Jay Baruchel (Undeclared), Martin Starr (Freaks), Apatow's real-life wife Leslie Mann and two who have joined his creative clan in his films, Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill. Loudon Wainwright III of Undeclared even pops up briefly and provides part of the score and Freaks alum James Franco makes a good-natured cameo as himself. Knocked Up feels as if you're being welcomed home, but that doesn't give it an automatic pass: It still must work as a movie as well and while most of it does, it doesn't quite hit all its marks.
As most should know by now, the premise involves drunken sex between Ben and the in-normal-circumstances unattainable babe Allison (Katherine Heigl), just promoted to on-air talent at E!, that results in an unexpected pregnancy. (The E! setting also provides a priceless Ryan Seacrest cameo, showing that he's got great humor about himself.) In fact, Allison's extreme denial early on prompts her sister (the great Mann) to ask if she's one of those women who won't realize she's pregnant until she's on the toilet and a baby falls out.
So, with great hesitancy, Allison shares the situation with an understandably shocked Ben. However, he then embraces the idea of a pending spawn, even though he's nowhere near ready for any responsibility. Ben seeks advice from his thrice-married dad (Harold Ramis) who tells him that he's the best thing that ever happened to him, which Ben says only makes him feel sad for him.
The rocky relationship of Allison's sister and her husband (Rudd) gives both Ben and Allison reason to pause. Mann and Rudd both deliver great comic performances laced with pain, especially Mann who plays a character similar to Laura Dern's in Year of the Dog but Mann never sinks to caricature at the expense of humor. Rudd finds marriage to be disappointing, commenting that he wishes he liked anything as much as his kids like bubbles and comparing matrimony to a tense, unfunny episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that lasts a lifetime instead of 22 minutes.
Parts of Knocked Up remain hard to swallow. Allison's decision to try to form a lasting relationship with Ben, even if she's decided to keep the baby, seems sudden and unconvincing. You believe that he'd fall in love with her, but it sounds odd when she says the same thing once she's sober.
Despite misgivings, the film does elicit a lot of hearty laughs and even some touching moments. One favorite speech gets delivered by a doorman at an exclusive nightclub.
In the interest of full disclosure, I did not have an ideal viewing experience. For some reason, an idiot couple thought that an R-rated comedy called Knocked Up, which wears its vulgarity proudly on its trailer, looked like an appropriate film to show their 3-year-old. The kid wouldn't shut up and the parents would take him out of the theater, then bring him back. Finally, I yelled in the dark, "Take the damn kid home already." Thankfully, the kid stayed pretty quiet after that. It always helps to put the fear of God – or at least angry audience members – into people.
It's also ironic, given the movie. Sorry folks: If you can't afford a baby sitter, get ready for a few years without moviegoing. You had a child, don't make the rest of the moviegoing public pay for it.
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TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Judd Apatow seems to defy just about everything one might hold true about certain forms of comedy. By and large, I subscribe to Jeffrey's 90-minute rule that comedies pushing their luck if they extend much past that running time, but Apatow provided a glowing exception to that rule with The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, the most I've laughed at a recent movie in ages. Then on top of that, he now seems to specialize in extremely vulgar comedies that, at their heart, hide family friendly messages: staying pure until marriage in the case of Virgin and now staying together for the sake of an unexpected baby in Knocked Up. Unfortunately, while Virgin manages to keep its momentum throughout its long running time, Knocked Up doesn't bear its extra frames as well, coming off as a bit flabby. Despite its need for some judicious trimming, it's still ends up as an entertaining way to spend your time.
One thing proving so special about Apatow's films, especially for fans of his great and short-lived TV series Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, is his penchant for bringing back his extended family time and again, making each enterprise feel as if you've been invited to the reunion as well. Seth Rogen, part of the great ensembles of both Freaks and Undeclared, gets the lead role of Ben Stone in Knocked Up, a stoner/slacker who believes that "weed cures everything" and lives off the dwindling proceeds of a postal truck accident with dreams of an Internet fortune made from a Web site that tracks nude scenes in movies.
Other Apatow alumni along for this ride include Jason Segel (also of both Freaks and Undeclared), Jay Baruchel (Undeclared), Martin Starr (Freaks), Apatow's real-life wife Leslie Mann and two who have joined his creative clan in his films, Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill. Loudon Wainwright III of Undeclared even pops up briefly and provides part of the score and Freaks alum James Franco makes a good-natured cameo as himself. Knocked Up feels as if you're being welcomed home, but that doesn't give it an automatic pass: It still must work as a movie as well and while most of it does, it doesn't quite hit all its marks.
As most should know by now, the premise involves drunken sex between Ben and the in-normal-circumstances unattainable babe Allison (Katherine Heigl), just promoted to on-air talent at E!, that results in an unexpected pregnancy. (The E! setting also provides a priceless Ryan Seacrest cameo, showing that he's got great humor about himself.) In fact, Allison's extreme denial early on prompts her sister (the great Mann) to ask if she's one of those women who won't realize she's pregnant until she's on the toilet and a baby falls out.
So, with great hesitancy, Allison shares the situation with an understandably shocked Ben. However, he then embraces the idea of a pending spawn, even though he's nowhere near ready for any responsibility. Ben seeks advice from his thrice-married dad (Harold Ramis) who tells him that he's the best thing that ever happened to him, which Ben says only makes him feel sad for him.
The rocky relationship of Allison's sister and her husband (Rudd) gives both Ben and Allison reason to pause. Mann and Rudd both deliver great comic performances laced with pain, especially Mann who plays a character similar to Laura Dern's in Year of the Dog but Mann never sinks to caricature at the expense of humor. Rudd finds marriage to be disappointing, commenting that he wishes he liked anything as much as his kids like bubbles and comparing matrimony to a tense, unfunny episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that lasts a lifetime instead of 22 minutes.
Parts of Knocked Up remain hard to swallow. Allison's decision to try to form a lasting relationship with Ben, even if she's decided to keep the baby, seems sudden and unconvincing. You believe that he'd fall in love with her, but it sounds odd when she says the same thing once she's sober.
Despite misgivings, the film does elicit a lot of hearty laughs and even some touching moments. One favorite speech gets delivered by a doorman at an exclusive nightclub.
In the interest of full disclosure, I did not have an ideal viewing experience. For some reason, an idiot couple thought that an R-rated comedy called Knocked Up, which wears its vulgarity proudly on its trailer, looked like an appropriate film to show their 3-year-old. The kid wouldn't shut up and the parents would take him out of the theater, then bring him back. Finally, I yelled in the dark, "Take the damn kid home already." Thankfully, the kid stayed pretty quiet after that. It always helps to put the fear of God – or at least angry audience members – into people.
It's also ironic, given the movie. Sorry folks: If you can't afford a baby sitter, get ready for a few years without moviegoing. You had a child, don't make the rest of the moviegoing public pay for it.
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Labels: 00s, Apatow, Franco, Jonah Hill, L. Dern, Paul Rudd, Ramis, Seth Rogen, Television
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
