Knocked up in the edit suite

Rating: 6/10 (18 June 2009)

Whilst watching this film I became increasingly aware of the bizarre editing. There seemed to be two different versions of the same film made and both edited together to make this one film. One version was a harder more verbally cruel one with anger-humor frat boy slacker (Sandler style) as a weapon and the other almost as a Drew Barrymore style comedy romance. It is as if both were filmed and then spliced together. I can see how neither tone or story angle worked so both were edited together to get this very uneven result. See the film again and then watch the out-takes and deleted scenes... there is material there that is both absurd and repulsive... and also explanatory (where Ben tells his flatmates he cannot live with them anymore, which is not in the final edited movie). Odd things just happen all through KNOCKED UP: There are whole scenes missing, linking scenes that explain why and how they are in the next scene. Ben just goes and rents an apartment; She has his picture on her work desk, as if he is some boyfriend when in the previous scenes she is exasperated with his sloppiness and person; suddenly they go spying on Paul Rudd and walk into a house somewhere... the intros of so many scenes have been chopped off and the viewer is abruptly halfway into another setting or tone or conversation without a smooth or logical segue-way into how or why they are there. Where is the scene where her mother actually meets him? The whole tone swings between vulgarity then really sooky romance then screaming rudeness, then shrewish selfishness, then everyone makes drag-queen style cracks at each other like some screwball comedy throwback (the Asian doctor for example) .. all inconsistent tone, direction editing and dialog. The gratuitous vulgarity and the extreme physical medical crudeness...the screaming subplot about the sister and her husband, the silly little girl rudeness etc... the argument in the car, it is all a jumble of different ideas and directing styles and writing. KNOCKED UP is a jigsaw puzzle edit of these films: ANIMAL HOUSE, MAYBE BABY, LOOK WHO'S TALKING, MONSTER IN LAW, BIG DADDY, American PIE, ROAD TRIP and any other US made crassness where humiliation and abuse is deemed funny. Howvere there is one genuinely inspired and hilarious scene in Las Vegas where Paul Rudd tries to explain why there are 5 different styles of chair in their room. It is as if someone else wrote and directed and edited in that scene too. Maybe KNOCKED UP was made by a committee. It looks and sounds as if it was.