Extremely Crude...But With Heart

Rating: 8/10 (5 March 2017)

The best way to describe "Knocked Up" is this: If a movie like "Superbad" actually had a shred of dramatic integrity (e.g. "a point") to add to its crude, sometimes gross-out antics, you'd have this comedy.
For a basic plot summary, "Knocked Up" sees stoner Ben (Seth Rogen) and straight-laced Allison (Katherine Heigl) hook up during a drunken one-night stand. When Allison finds out that she is pregnant, she must decide not only what to do about her "situation", but also try to include Ben in the process.
To be very frank, this is one of the crudest movies ever made, filled with gross-out images, a boatload of profanity, and sexual zingers at literally almost every turn. If these are things that you are uncomfortable with, then turn the other way and run right now!
At the same time, "Knocked Up" does have one key attribute that most of its contemporaries lack: heart. When you wade through all the stoner jokes, sexual innuendo, and the like, you actually get a story that you might just find yourself caring about. It touches on a variety of different marital/relationship themes, and the tremendous acting of Heigl/Rogen helps to add a legitimate emotional dynamic to the proceedings.
Basically, "Knocked Up" is Judd Apatow's pulling together of the traditional romantic comedy and the stoner/goofball genre, a pairing that one would think wouldn't work all that well. It does in this case, though, because the overall effort is taken seriously enough to produce a perfect mix of well-crafted jokes from all areas of life. Unless you are turned off by the crudeness, you will be both laughing at and caring about the characters in this movie.