Knocked Up

"You're prettier than I am."

Screened at the SXSW Film Festival

It’s common knowledge that Hollywood is a very competitive industry. Everyone wants in; people troll the streets of Los Angeles with their screenplays in hand; thousands upon thousands of film students across the country compete for a precious few paying gigs and many fewer opportunities to attain fame and fortune. Logic and the principles of economics seem to dictate that the cream should rise to the top, that with that many people climbing over each other for a shot, those who hit the jackpot should be the best. Watching Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up, I wondered why there aren’t more films — especially comedies — this sharp, this clever, this good. Why are we perpetually stuck with Because I Said So and Code Name: The Cleaner? Are the best not good enough? Are we dealing with a market failure?

I should note that even Knocked Up doesn’t come close to the heartfelt brilliance of Apatow’s The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Some structural hiccups, which I will address in due course, keep it from those heights. But it’s so good — so consistent, so honest-to-goodness funny — that it made tears well up in my eyes and sent thoughts of an Apatow-dominated Hollywood utopia swimming through my mind. The first forty minutes left me physically exhausted from laughing so hard.

Some of what makes Knocked Up so wonderful is simply unlikely in a major release. Who, for example, would have pegged chubby, curly-haired, goofy-looking Seth Rogen as a romantic lead in a movie that largely depends on the teenage and college crowd for its livelihood? How exactly did Apatow persuade Universal to allow him to retain a reference to Matisyahu and an utterly abstract and surreal joke about Wilmer Valderrama (both showstoppers for those who get the reference) in the final cut? Perhaps the conundrum I posed in the first paragraph is solved by the realization that what’s lacking from the vast majority of modern comedies isn’t talent, but the willingness to include material that may soar past some of the audience.

The hilarious obscurity is in service of a belated-coming-of-age story inside a romantic comedy framework. The two protagonists — Rogen’s overgrown child and the young professional he unexpectedly impregnates (Katherine Heigl) — strike a nice balance, with the former potentially likable despite being a disaster, and the latter appropriately horrified but not obnoxiously stuck-up. Heigl is a nice foil for Rogen’s brand of self-deprecating, allusion-heavy sarcasm, and the film gets a lot of mileage out of her angrily incredulous reactions (“Dental dam? What is this dental dam?”); Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd also have some great moments as the already-married counterpoint. Rudd in particular has become a comedic powerhouse, and he gets some of the film’s biggest laughs in a tricky role meant to divide our sympathies.

The problems arise in the second act, when I was temporarily overcome by a sense of inevitability. At a certain point, it becomes clear that the film will have to manufacture a crisis in the characters’ relationship and then resolve it before birthin’ time. When the film lost its ability to surprise me, at least in a narrative sense, I felt its emotional pull weaken. The ending is touching, but cannot compare to the euphoria — cinematic and otherwise — of Virgin‘s final minutes.

But though I knew what was going to happen, Knocked Up never ceased to surprise and amaze me with its wit and its brains. I laughed so long and hard that afterward I declined to see another festival comedy, feeling that it was certain to disappoint. Judd Apatow is the potential of modern Hollywood comedy realized, mixing the broad with the obscure, tapping into universal fears, passions and insecurities, doing wonders with catchy high concepts. Knocked Up and The 40 Year-Old Virgin are the beginning of a wonderful new friendship.

-- Eugene Novikov

Released:	2007
Starring:	Ken Jeong, Jason Siegel, Katherine Heigl, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann
Directed by:	Judd Apatow
Rated:	R