Knocked Up

This was, hands down, the film I was most looking forward to this summer. It didn't quite live up to expectations, but that would have been almost impossible.

Knocked Up isn't as funny as director and all-around comedy God Judd Apatow's first film, The 40 Year Old Virgin, but it's probably a better film. The dumb-friends-hanging-around moments in KU are fewer, farther between, and less memorable than those in 40YOV (there's nothing like the "you know how I know you're gay?" scene, for example), but the inevitable Apatow stab at relevance is more pointed in this one. The struggles and terrors of dealing with commitment and children are explicated vividly, to an almost squirm-inducing degree. There are a few canned moments of standard issue romantic comedy plotting and emotional beats (the whole idea that the hot young professional woman would keep her one-night-stand baby in the first place), but they're outnumbered by the moments that hit home. Frustratingly, though, Apatow, like pretty much every other successful purveyor of comedy in American film, is unable to successfully meld the comedy in the film, which is mostly the result of slack, improvisational hang-out scenes, with the emotionally truthful plot points and encounters. The plot is just an excuse to produce gags, until it isn't, at which point it gets poignant, but stops being funny. I think the best way to watch this movie will be on the special edition DVD, where all the serrated relationship observations will stand, as well as a good five hours of deleated "stoners insulting each other" footage. It will definitely be the DVD I'll most be looking forward to this fall.

Two miscellaneous points:

1. While Kathrine Heigl is incredibly hot, she is not very good in this movie: her entire performance is pitched at a level of near-hysteria...even before she gets impregnated by goofy furball Seth Rogen.

2. My Paul Rudd mancrush officially knows no bounds. I would literally watch Paul Rudd eat a sandwich and read the newspaper, then take a shit, do a few miles on the treadmill, then watch an episode of Maury Povich. He's fucking hilarious.

Score: 8.0