Foetal Attraction

Rating: 8/10 (25 August 2007)

I'm not sure if the best joke in this movie was intentional but irrespective of whether Judd Apatov is familiar with the musical Follies or not it was classy to see the leading man playing a character called Ben Stone, a name shared by one of the four leads in Follies, whose own title is, of course, multi-layered. Knocked Up has just opened in England to mostly rave reviews and though it's not the kind of movie I would gravitate toward naturally I decided to see what all the fuss was about and on the whole I'm glad I did. On one level there is a high content of juvenalia in the attitude of the group of four male friends one of whom, Seth Rogen, lucks in, against what must be astronomical odds, to a seriously beautiful and intelligent girl, Kathy Heigl who unnacountably takes him home for unprotected sex after a casual meeting in a bar/disco. It's how the film handles the aftermath - Heigl becomes pregnant - that is its strength; for one thing Rogen matures to the stage where he shows serious signs of maturing and accepting the role of father and despite the evidence of a less than stable marriage between Heigl's sister and her husband, the two seem prepared to give relationships a shot. In short what we have here is the classic mixture of laughter and tears but, like several similar films it's something to be enjoyed once but not necessarily revisited.