Depressing "Comedy"

Rating: 2/10 (5 September 2007)

The credit sequence was very entertaining, but not long after it ended I began sinking into despair. This movie has received excessively positive reviews - and the fellow across the aisle from me was busting a gut from laughing every couple of minutes - but I kept thinking that if this is what passes for comedy these days, I don't want to see anymore "comedies." The only reason I went to see this is because its precursors, "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," also received extremely favorable reviews; I didn't go see those because I was afraid they would be like, well, like this movie. It's not just that the variations on the word "fuck" become really tiresome within the first five minutes, nor the teen-boys-trying-to-get-laid plot has been worked to death; there's just no wit or style to this thing. By the time the obnoxious, way-over-the-top cops came on, I was ready to leave. The last movie I saw that struck me as clever and actually made me laugh out loud a couple of times, was "Stranger Than Fiction," so I know there are still people out there who can write and direct a movie with some wit and class.