Knocked Up

by Brian Zitzelman

Two years after releasing the hit The 40 Year Old Virgin, Judd Apatow returns to the directing chair with another rightly titled film, Knocked Up. With his usual cast of henchmen, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Jay Baruchel and newfound lead Seth Rogen, Apatow treads familiar but fertile ground, mixing juvenile humor with drama into a tasty mix, full of laughs and surely set to be watched over and over again.

Rogen is Ben Stone, an illegal Canadian immigrant who lives with his closest buddies and preps a celebrity nudity site, spilling the goods on who gets naked in what movie and exactly how far in. Ben’s happy with life, scrounging video collections for bare breasts, smoking a lot of pot and jousting his friends on wooden planks over the filthiest pool in existence. One night Ben goes clubbing and meets Alison (Katherine Heigl). Out celebrating her new promotion with her sister Debbie (Mann), Alison warms to Ben’s charms, a lazy but sweet man. Drinks are had, bad dancing ensues and a condom miscommunication happens, leading to a night of baby making sex. The plot is simple and plays out from there, with Alison deciding to have the child and hoping that Ben will become more than just a sperm donor.

Knocked Up, like Apatow’s last effort, is at its heart, a romantic comedy. Two people meet, fancy one another and love and drama ensues. What makes Knocked Up so special is the way the creators recognize the trapping and standards of the romantic comedy genre and play with them, while still accepting its fate as one. Melodrama is largely kept out of sight, even if in the film’s later minutes a few scenes resonate more awkwardly than they should. The will they or won’t they has different stakes here. Ben and Alison realize they are not a solid fit but try no less.

The cast is vital to the picture’s achievement. Rogen resembles a young, slackerish Albert Brooks, a good guy who stumbles at the big moments. He has an honest presence, with the ability to say harsh critiques without coming off as malicious, a trait many comedians who try romantic leads never acquire. Heigl’s presence may be the tougher one; she is the straight woman. Heigl gets some laughs in but is a steadier force and one whom plays off Rogen sharply. They make a bizarre but quite cute couple. As dead on as Rogen and Heigl are, the supporting cast is equally remarkable.

Paul Rudd is a one-liner machine, barking them with confidence and zing. His sad Pete, father of two daughters and married to Mann’s Leslie, has an integrity and ridiculousness to him that is fantastic. Pete loves his kids and has a fondness for his wife but has let every nuisance of life blind him from realizing what he has got. Nicely, Apatow never overreaches or overemphasizes the matter but Rudd instills a passion into Pete that makes his scenes pop. That, and Rudd’s riffing about the life of chairs when no one is around, combined with Doc Brown quotes from Back to the Future, show that the actor can steal any show, a tough feat considering the competition. Mann, Apatow’s real life wife, is in top form and proves she deserve more work of this caliber. Jonah Hill, who will also be in Rogen’s upcoming film Superbad, is another exact fit to the film’s puzzle, boisterous and overconfident.

One of the best things a comedy can say for itself is that the laughs are so fast and frequent that remembering the best parts is a tough task. Knocked Up certainly is in that category. I can recollect ten hilarious bits off my head and am positive that there are others briefly forgotten. Apatow’s ability to have the absurd and real coincide is his finest talent and only further shows how tiresome Carrey, Sandler, Murphy and Stiller have become.