A Charming Look at Sexual Politics and Genre Bending

Rating: 7/10 (15 October 2007)

Striking while the iron was hot, Judd Apatow ended up filming two more movies in quick succession to his big success, 40 Year Old Virgin. We of course know them as "Knocked Up," and "Superbad." Compared to the other movies, however, Knocked Up quickly stands out as something of an oddity. It doesn't seem to have as many jokes per capita that the other two do. And with good reason, because it's not a straight up comedy.
The movie walks the line between what's become known as the "gross out" comedy, which is usually a bunch of guys who get in crazy predicaments, and the wacky dialogue they give to each other that supplements the action, and the romantic comedy, where the guy and the gal, despite some unforeseen problem, manage to find true love.
When you step back from the movie and look at how the narrative flows, you find that what it really does is try to work both ends against each other. In essence the movie is asking its viewers of both sexes to meet each other half way. I found it fascinating to watch the change that sprang up from both main characters even as the movie asked the audience to do the same. (My favorite and most unexpected part of the movie was watching Alison looking for tits and bush in films to further Ben's website) With a movie that gambles like this, it's easy to see why so many users might want to rate it poorly. But this isn't really a conventional movie, despite how it was marketed, so it doesn't work trying to hold it to "gross out" comedy standards, and it doesn't really work to hold it up to romantic comedy standards either, because, obviously, it's trying to do both in a meager 2 hours.
Here's an example. A scene with Ben shows him tearing into Debbie because she wants to run his daughter's birthing. This is typical of a romantic comedy, where the jokes are about the characters bumping heads and the results are often emotionally driven. (This is also true of similar types of movies referred to as "comedies of manners") Ben's speech and Debbie's reaction *is* the joke. The very next scene, however, is Ben's friends fooling around with wheelchairs, doing physical and low-brow comedy, even mentioning Steven Hawking in a joke that is typical of a "gross out" comedy, that often goes for the lowest common denominator or the shock value of a joke.
This kind of back and forth leads me to believe that many of the jokes were placed strategically to try to encourage the couples in the audience to laugh at the same things, if only for a moment. Or, perhaps even to highlight the kind of gender differences that caused "gross out" and romantic comedies to be 2 different genres in the first place.
As a movie that tries to split the difference, though, it still doesn't work perfectly. It does seem weighted more towards the male point of view, and in many cases, the "gross out" part of the spectrum, which could leave female viewers feeling like they got cheated (Or like the movie never understood them in the first place, which could be a valid claim.) At the very least, however, this functions well as a romantic comedy that's made more appealing for guys. While it's not high on "gross out" humor, it manages to walk the line between the crude and the genuinely heartwarming.
Not perfect by any means, this movie tries to provide some common ground for couples and those in relationships, and succeeds, to some degree.
7/10 stars