Mindlessly vulgar film like The 40-Year Old Virgin and not even funny

Rating: 1/10 (29 September 2007)

It seems Hollywood is infatuated with Judd Apatow after the runaway success of that other movie, so they gave him another shot. The result is Knocked Up, and it's an abortion of the movie in comedy genre.
The jokes are so shopworn and grotesquely vulgar it isn't funny. There are very few moments worth the barely audible chuckle, like a disabled parking spot cheat. I found the reference to Stephen Hawkings rather tasteless bordering on cruel. What, Judd doesn't have the genius level so he scoop low to the vulgar comedy of making fun of just about everyone and getting away with it?
Katherine Heigl plays a convincing pretty woman and she nailed it -- she looks and sounds cute even when foul-mouthed. However, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd and the fat roommate characters with the penchant for F-bombs are gratingly annoying -- so irritating they should be beaten up for scratching the chalk board with fingernails in terms of poor acting -- their grade school acting which prove this movie feeds on lowest common denominator mentality with infantile attitude and mindless profanity. The culprit is easy: Judd Apatow, deluded to believe that the more vulgar, the funnier it is. Quite the contrary. I'm not even a prude and I found "Very Bad Things" & "Smokin' Ace" hysterically funny.
However, the point is, Judd Apatow writes so many throw-away jokes it gets boring, so he resorts to appallingly cruel jokes (xenophobic & sexist among other sacrileges) later in the movie. It's my deduction Judd is a depraved man with deep issues. What did Stephen Hawking do that compelled Mr. Apatow to write a shameless joke on his personal life and deriding achievement in advancing human knowledge? Mr. Apatow's mentality, like that of equally vicious & self-important comedians Sarah Silverman and Carlos Mencia ( George Carlin gets the pass because he's a genius without being needlessly malicious and cruel), may be childish, though it could be that he exhibits the characteristic trait of "Peter Pan syndrome" in slacker male characters, with which I might concur as I've had past roommates like that. Hollywood have proved it still deliver consistent quantity of trash for box office dollars sacrificing decency for cheap & vulgar preference. No wonder why parts of the world, particularly the Middle East outside of Israel, despise Hollywood in peddling propagandistic filth to condition North American audiences to accept the vulgar attitude and lifestyle.
Why did Harold Ramis, the talented co-writer/actor in Ghostbuster movies and director of Groundhog Day, agree to a cameo in this movie? And why did Bennett Miller, who directed the well-made true crime debut movie Capote, agree to visit the set and tag along with the insanely profane Judd Apatow? (I saw "Directing the Director" extra and wasn't sure if it's an inside joke as the ending is obvious) Mind boggles.
The ending credit with the photo gallery of the cast and crew members as real-life parents border on saccharinity for emotional manipulation, in light of the amazingly vulgar content of the movie. I find this hilariously ironic. Maybe exalting the distribution and production of child pornography should become an acceptable norm in future Hollywood productions to demonstrate the amoral perception of Hollywood producers.
"Knocked Up" is so pointlessly profane, lame, unfunny and treacly it's one of the few movies I had to take two ibuprofen pills afterwards. The ending in The 40-Year-Old Virgin was horrifically lame and contrived; Knocked Up is worse throughout. Don't bothering wasting a phony 3-dollar bill renting this despicably raunchy movie, it's more like primetime Cinemax/Showtime comedy variety that emphasize excessive vulgarity over quality.
Simply put, Judd Apatow is a hack of comedy genre like Michael Bay is a hack of the action genre.
* out of four