Knocked Up

May 31, 2007

Rated: R Runtime: 129 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Judd Apatow returns to the directors chair to follow-up his surprise hit from 2005, the 40 year old virgin, with another solid film from his genre. I say his genre because in my estimation he is the ‘John Hughes’ of the 2000’s and we all know Hughes films were considered to be a genre unto themselves so why not Apatow. Anywhoo, onto the good stuff.

Knocked up is all about a guy that gets really lucky one night, only to find out his luck may have ran out about 8 weeks later and a girl who’s luck ran out the second she saw him nekkid the morning after. Now I realize that story doesn’t sound that complicated and to be honest it isn’t but in the right directors hands it can turn into a pretty funny story. Throw in a few twists and turns, some sentimental BS and you’ve got yourself a movie… Now that’s Italian!

Our Guy; Ben Stone (Rogan) is an out of work fat Canadian that works at home with his friends in hopes of making it rich by creating a web site that details hot female celebs in the raw… all the while not knowing that one already exists (censored to protect our hit count:), and he’s down to his last 200 bucks, so his life not so good. On the other side of the coin we have our Girl; Alison Scott (Heigl), an up and coming, smoking hot ‘E’ network on air personality with her professional life ahead of her… with only one small exception, she mooches off her sister and her husband (Mann & Rudd) by living in the pool house in their back yard, things are going pretty well for our Hotty. Do you see the wackiness that headed your way?

On the night of Alison’s promotion to on air personality from go-fer, she and her sister Debbie decide to head to the club to celebrate and that’s where she meets Ben. They dance, drink and make out at the bar and then the most unlikely thing in the world happens, this hot chick that would NEVER in a million years talk to anyone that looks like Rogan (he needs to thank his lucky stars he’s an actor), asks him to come back to her lilly pad for the night. He scores (Yay!), she craps out (Aww!) and the rest of the story just kind of tells itself.

The strongest parts of this movie by far are the dialog and Seth Rogan’s delivery (Alison’s not so much, you’ll see what I mean) but the supporting cast of… well basically the entire cast of Freaks and Geeks is also freaking awesome; Rudd and Mann have their moments at stealing the spotlight too but for me the best part of all is the cameo provided by Ryan Seacrest… I believe whole heartedly the lines he spews out of his mouth are exactly how he feels and he was funny as Ish delivering them. It’s nice to see celebs make fun of themselves and this movie has a few of those (cough..Carell.. cough) but Seacrest was the high point.

In short, the movie is funny but it also has a very dramatic tone to it as well that will suit anyone that has kids, or wants them. There are some moments in the movie that touched me and some others that had me howling, so a nice mix. I liked it enough to give it 4 stars but not quite enough to give it 5 so you should give it a shot if you like Apatow’s work… And, If you think 40 Year Old Virgin and Anchorman were the beginning of Judd’s genius and you didn’t get the Freaks and Geeks comment, you need to add that series to your queue as well and then you’ll see where his style really started.

Posted by J.C. Edwards | Filed Under 4 Stars, Comedy, Drama, Katherine Heigl, Leslie Mann, Paul Rudd, R, Ryan Seacrest, Seth Rogan, Theatrical