Most overrated of the year

Rating: Null/10 (15 June 2007)

It seems that I was one of the people in America who did not enjoy The 40 Year Old Virgin, popular comedy writer Judd Apatow's directorial film debut that launched the film careers of stars Steve Carell and Seth Rogen. There were some chuckles in it for sure, but I found it to be too long and meandering in tone. The best part of 'Virgin' was co-star Rogen who definitely upstaged Carell. With Rogen in the starring role this time around, I decided to give Knocked Up a shot.
Unfortunately, the results are similar to that of 'Virgin'. Rogen is hysterical, it's the rest of the picture that's the problem. From an incredibly predictable script to questionable direction, Knocked Up is surprisingly less enjoyable than Apatow's previous effort. However, it does suffer from his debut's biggest problems: tone and length. I don't know what makes Apatow think comedies should be required to be over two hours, though he needs to become more familiar with the process of editing. Every scene goes on at least 30 seconds longer than they should. Whether a scene is relevant to the plot or not, it becomes such a point of excess that I half expected credits at the bottom of the screen to appear and say "this is a joke, laugh now" or "make sure you took in what this character is saying." It doesn't help that the tone is all over the place. The switches between comedy and drama are jarring. Rogen actually handles himself quite well with the dramatic material, its love interest Katherine Heigl who isn't always convincing when she needs to be. Heigl is a good actress when given the right material, she just seems out of place here. To be fair, her character isn't very well written. Neither are the roommates in the picture. The roommates are all one-dimensional stoners that get all the best lines yet little character development. Anyone expecting well-rounded characters is advised to see something else. In fact, anyone expecting anything of actual quality is advised to see something else. Without Rogen, Knocked Up would be more painful than child birth. 2/10