a guide to having a baby, with stoners, and E! news

Rating: 9/10 (6 June 2007)

My first reaction at the end of the film was probably too simplistic a comparison: Harold and Kumar meets Nine Months (yes, the Hugh Grant/Julianne Moore pregnancy comedy from 95). But the film actually carries off how so few romantic comedies know how- to actually give us a man and a woman to actually give a damn about. More than that, Apatow has matched extraordinarily well the shlubby but funny and down-to-earth skills of Seth Rogan with the vibrant, uncertain but ultimately believably conflicted personality in Katherine Heigl. It's a tough sell with it's premise, to be sure, that a very attractive E! news reporter like Allison (Heigl) and a total stoner almost-bum like Ben (Rogan) could hook up over less than 12 hours and suddenly procreate, but there you have it. It's a premise that actually had me avoiding the film, even with the immense hype from critics as well as friends and family, because the footage shown in the trailer didn't seem to be that much to write home about.
The actual finished product, however, is certainly the funniest American movie out so far in 2007, pointed at the age variant of around 18 to, um, 37 maybe, with all of the supporting characters, as well as Rogan and co-star Paul Rudd as Heigel's brother-in-law via sister played by Leslie Mann, very sharp with levels of sarcastic wit and pop-culture references. At the same time Apatow gets some really amazing one-liners regarding Ben's friends joking on each other (the bearded guy provides the most fodder, but the general attitude is 'hey, f*** it, lets get stoned"), but doesn't lose track of what he's trying to do, successfully. He's out to criticize as well as embrace a culture where responsibility for one's self has to do with how the other in the relationship is comfortable or dissatisfied with the other. And Apatow makes the Rudd/Mann relationship a kind of bittersweet (much more bitter really) counterpoint to the rocky start to Ben and Allison's 'shot-gun' romance.
There's silly one liners ("I live in your phone!"), goofy caricatures (the gynecologists), smart aleck kids who know a lot of "bad" words that provides for some wicked laughs, and the usual mayhem in the delivery room an actual winner in terms of making it partly true and partly farce (albeit Judd doesn't seem to understand, despite having three kids, what a woman is like *throughout* the labor process, as reconciliations don't usually happen aside from script contrivances). Yet all the while, it's a sincere film, with the relationships shown not as cardboard cut-outs but where the people actually have to deal, if eventually, with the lots in life they've got themselves into. What is it to balance love and commitment, Apatow is asking. There's even one shot that provides a note of discomfort with the characters of Ben and Allison as they have a bad argument in the car, the view being outside of the car in traffic, a distance kept because, and it's a credit to Apatow as a storyteller, we do care about what will happen in this situation.
In fact, that's probably one of the best things to say about Knocked Up. Too often in movies, especially of the cineplex fare, the situation is more-so told than an actual story. This is one of those rare cases where the situation, a tricky one to surpass as it's been done (the 'situation' of pregnancy, not so much the one-nite-stand part), unfolds more as a story, and by the time the 'happy' ending comes, it's not a cop-out or cheat. And this goes without saying that the actors, as well as the filmmaker, are totally assured with their comic skills, be they subtle (the dazed look of the bearded "Martin Scorsese on cocaine" friend, even Rudd to a degree can be staggeringly subtle), or big (the "second" sex scene between the main couple). Quite simply, it's THE rom-com sleeper of the past few years.