Knocked Up

A Judd Apatow style has emerged: profane comedies with a heart of gold. Like his big hit from last year, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up is full of characters who are vulgar but sweet. That's a pretty good combination for the romantic comedy of the 21st Century, and Knocked Up is mostly pleasing. But ultimately I think it takes an easy way out and settles when it could have been far more interesting.

Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl) works for the E! Television Network. She's just been promoted to be on-air talent. She goes out to celebrate and meets a shaggy, corpulent man-child named Ben (Seth Rogen). Blurred by alcohol, she takes him home and they have drunken sex, during which he neglects to put on a condom. Nature takes its course and these two people, who ordinarily would have never seen each other again, attempt to make it work for the baby's sake.

There's nothing wrong with that premise, but as a foundation for the film, Apatow has a flimsy structure. This is mainly because the character of Allison is woefully underwritten. She's obviously attractive, has a good career, and seems to have no major mental illnesses. There's been a lot of buzz that no one who looks like her would ever sleep with a guy like Ben, but I'm not going to go there. People get together for a myriad different reasons, and the dulling effect of alcohol on the decision-making process can't be underestimated. But we need to know more about her, to understand why she sticks with him. But we don't know anything about her, or her romantic history. One line about a Wendy complex would have been enough, but she's a complete cypher. The other solution would have involved a complete rewriting and would have made a more interesting picture, and that's if the two of them had no romantic possibilities and instead tried to cope with being parents without the inevitable romantic comedy underpinnings.

So I think Knocked Up is a good movie, but not a great movie, and there's plenty to like here, especially the supporting characters played by Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd. They are Allison's sister and brother-in-law, and they might have made a good movie unto themselves. Mann is pretty much a harpie, and Rudd is her pussy-whipped husband who understands his situation but feels hopeless. He and Ben become friends, and as in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Rogen and Rudd make a great comedy team. At one point Rudd tells Rogen, "Being married is like Everybody Loves Raymond except it's not funny." There's a great sequence where the two go to Vegas and eat magic mushrooms while watching Cirque du Soleil. Though Mann's character is a stock one, she's good enough to give the character some extra depth, and a scene in which she can't get admitted to a hot nightclub because she is too old makes us actually sympathize with her.

I also liked scenes with Allison and her bosses at E!, particularly Kristin Wiig of Saturday Night Live, who perfects the technique of saying undermining things while making them sound supporting.

Then there's Ben's friends, a house full of slacker burnouts who are starting a web site cataloguing the appearances of actresses who appear naked in movies. They are more interested in bong-hits than actually doing any work, though. These guys are so clueless that they are unaware of the existence of Mr. Skin (one of them says he heard about it, but didn't connect the dots). It's clear that Apatow has great affection for these characters. I just wish he had spread a little of that affection around more evenly.