Proof that a movie can both be good and formulaic.

Rating: 7/10 (4 July 2007)

We've all seen this movie before. Poor schlub meets beautiful woman, they fall in love and live happily ever after. This story is the inevitable fantasy for normal guys, duplicated countless times in other, less interesting films. It fails more often than it succeeds, but when it does succeed, it virtually guarantees that people will pay to see the film.
Movies work best as a mirror. We all want to see ourselves reflected back off that screen. Whether that be a world we recognize, or characters we identify with. We need to see ourselves up there on the screen. That's what these kinds of stories do. They tell us, the normal looking guys who make up the percentage of the male population, that we can get a girl that looks like this. Granted, we wouldn't like to do it under these circumstances, but still. The point is there.
So it's no surprise that movies keep getting made with this premise. But it doesn't explain why this particular movie is good.
This movie has all the familiar parts. The four act story: boy meets girl, boy and girl get together, boy and girl fight, boy and girl reunite. It has the pretty girl (Katherine Heigl) and the "average guy" (Seth Rogan). And the two do work it out in the end.
Therein lies probably the biggest complaint. Why would a girl like Heigl be interested in a guy like Rogan? Other than the baby, that would never happen in real life. Or so they want us to believe. In all probability, it wouldn't happen in real life. But that's not the point. The point, here, is to create the fantasy that it could happen. You can dissect the fantasy of any movie and poke holes in the premise. But, in so doing, you are destroying the very point the film is trying to make.
Regardless, as in Apatow's previous film, Knocked Up rises above it's peers because of the great casting and intelligent script. For what it lacks in originality, it more than makes up for with it's honest depiction of it's characters and good ear for dialogue. The easy camaraderie of Ben (Seth Rogan) and his friends give this film a relaxed and familiar quality that most films of this kind don't have.
Instead of being boring and forced, this movie is fun and light. It realizes that it's just a comedy, and doesn't strive for anything more than that. The dramatic parts don't try too hard to be dramatic, and the funny parts don't try too hard to be funny. The laughs are plenty, and you generally feel something for the characters, but there's nothing exploitive or generic here.
In spite of all that, I don't know if this movie is for everyone. The humor is crude, because the main characters (Ben Stone and his friends) are crude. They spend their time smoking pot and perusing movies for nudity. Their friendship is decidedly juvenile, but in an affectionate way. I think any young man can identify with their interaction, and the average young woman will roll her eyes at the puerile nature of these guys, and how they remind her of men she's known in her life.
Ultimately, this is the story of a young, immature man who's forced to grow up. This point isn't driven home too hard, but it is allowed to exist within the framework of the overall film. While the end result of this movie is to make you laugh, there is more than enough character development and intelligence to make this film standout from typical, similar, Hollywood fare.
It's definitely worth a look.