Deserves Oscar for best movie...or at least most enjoyable

Rating: 10/10 (16 July 2007)

This is a very very very funny film. I really can't say how funny it was. I'd have to include about 18 "very"s which, as Ace Ventura said about three poisoned arrows, is "too many". Director and writer Judd Apatow has a unique and welcome take on comedy. He does not attempt to hew out its coarseness. All the sometimes gratuitous profanity which one might typically encounter in the course of a day is included in the movie and Apatow does not shy away from supposedly taboo or off-color topics. In so doing, Apatow and his talented cast have again struck a chord with people who appreciate the everyday nature of his movies.
The heart of the movie is quite simple. An unlikely couple, after a little too much fun out, has sex and the woman becomes pregnant and the couple, the charming and beautiful Katherine Heigl as up-and-coming TV producer/host Alison Scott and the beefy and very funny writer/director Seth Rogen as laid-back stoner Ben Stone have to decide how they will proceed. First of all, will the child be aborted? Will Stone be involved in the child's upbringing? Will the couple marry? Will they stay together? This classic challenge makes for a rich vein of humor which Apatow mines very well. Apatow does not sugarcoat or mislead about the very real challenges facing this unlikely couple. But his characters seem so plausible and have such airs of reality about them that the challenges they encounter do not seem unreasonable. As said, his two co-stars are very talented.
The one reservation I had about the plausibility of the film was the difference in their appearances. To be quite blunt, Alison is gorgeous and Ben is quite pedestrian looking. Of course, the reasons for which they were together tend to minimize the importance of that difference, but still and all, if couples who look so unconventional do exist, I have not seen them. That said, Heigl is very likable and one roots for her and Rogen delivers in spades on the promise of his one-liners and throwaway digs as one of Steve Carell's co-workers in The "40 Year Old Virgin". He improvises much of his work here, as do many of the actors. Rogen has an inventive comic mind which he used to help Sascha Baron Cohen work on "Da Ali G Show" and his quick mind is quite evident in this movie. Some of the best scenes are loosely written frameworks of scenes in which Ben and his goofy friends sit around and riff, in addition to scenes including both Rogen and Paul Rudd who is also clearly in his element improvising comedy. There are some other excellent performances, most notably Leslie Mann (Apatow's wife), as Alison's somewhat neurotic and insecure but protective older sister Debbie In particular, Jason Segel as perhaps the slickest of Ben's friends, Jason, a guy who is very smooth with the ladies in spite of his pedestrian looks. As mentioned, Rudd, as Debbie's music scout husband is also very, very good and seems to have developed a good collaborative relationship with Apatow, having worked with him on his last two movies.
It will be interesting to see the success of future Apatow projects given his obvious abilities and accomplishments thus far and it will be an enjoyable anticipation.