About Last Night...

Comedy is so strange. You know, I watched Knocked Up opening night back in June and I thought it was fall-out-of-the-seat funny at times. I couldn't wait to see it on DVD, because I missed a lot of lines due to the crowd laughing so much. Flash-forward a few months and here I am watching the extended/unrated version at home and I'm thinking to myself, "Wait, what exactly was I laughing at?"

For starters, Ben's (Seth Rogen) character is so obnoxious that I can't suspend enough disbelief to make the relationship with Alison (Heigl) even semi-plausible. I mean, even if Alison wasn't played by the statuesque Katherine Heigl, I'd be pressed to believe he could get a girl to fall for him. He's coarse, crude and practically charmless. Yeah, he's funny at times, but those moments seemed far more rare on the second viewing.

I will say that Paul Rudd remains the most consistently funny thing in the movie. His riff on chairs in Vegas still felt like an inspired completely out-of-nowhere bit of comedy. Unfortunately, there's not enough of him and too much of his character's wife. Leslie Mann's Debbie rubbed me a little the wrong way when I first saw the film, but watching it again, her character was downright unbearable. Ben's defense of her in Vegas when he talks about her humor and kindness just doesn't ring true as far as what the audience sees. And it remains preposterous to have a character even suggest that playing fantasy league baseball is somehow worse or even on a par with infidelity. The only scene with her that I dug was the bouncer's takedown of her and Alison at the club ("It's not that you're not hot. I can't let you in because you old as f@##...for this club, not you know, for the Earth. You old, she's pregnant. Can't have a bunch of old pregnant b!#ches running around in the club. That's crazy."). Classic.

I also never realized how much Rogen's and Jonah Hill's schtick were the same. They both have this mode where they get angry and just launch into these expletive-laced tirades until they get hoarse. Granted, it can be funny (see Hill's Knocked Up deleted-scene commentary on Brokeback Mountain or his constant mantra from Superbad, "What the f@#$!"), but it gets old fast. I still like the guy, but I hope he doesn't lean on that comedic styling too much in his next flick, Pineapple Express. I'm still pulling for him to make funny movies. I actually enjoyed him in Superbad ("Did you just c@ckblock McLovin'? We're supposed to guide his c@ck.").

Speaking of Superbad, it actually does stand up to repeat viewings. Watching it a second time, I still found myself laughing jokes I'd just heard/seen a few weeks prior. Much credit to Hill and Cera. I wouldn't say it's as funny as what's for my money the funniest movie in the last few years, Talladega Nights, but it's a definite keeper. I should go rewatch 40-Year Old Virgin too. I remember thinking it was good but not great at the time, but I've never revisited it. Maybe I'll give Knocked Up another shot in a couple of months; watch it with someone who's never seen it; gauge his or her reaction. We'll see.

What a difference a few months makes. Wow.

Movie Pick of the Week

Judd Apatow and his band of merry men pretty much own comedy at this point. If you’ve laughed at a movie in the past three years, odds are pretty good he had a hand in it. His production credits include: Anchorman, 40-Year Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Knocked Up and now Superbad.

It’s gotten to the point where the studios are attaching trailers to his films that use the new film to promote the even newer film. The trailer for Walk Hard, another Apatow production due out at the end of the year, promotes itself as being from the guy who brought you Knocked Up (which just came out a few months ago) and Superbad, the movie you’re paying to see. Nice. I don’t begrudge the guy his success either. As coach Larry Brown might say, he’s doing it “the right way.” All his movies have a healthy dose of humanity in them. This goes back to his television work on the under-seen “Freaks and Geeks” and almost not-seen-at-all “Undeclared.”

Apatow’s comedies are not very elaborate. They don’t rely on set-ups that are too preposterous or contrived ala the Farrelly or Zucker brothers. Not knocking those guys—they’ve made some of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. His films don’t really contain “homerun”-moments. There are no “hair gel” moments like in There’s Something About Mary; no “double premature ejaculation shown on the internet” like in American Pie. His movies are just consistently funny, mining humor out of the mundane situations we all find ourselves in on occasion (actually the Will Ferrell movies are an exception to that, but Will Ferrell is…well, Will Ferrell). But Apatow’s movies stick. It’s like the difference between being told a funny story and being told a hilarious joke. The joke might make you laugh harder the first time, but the story is something you can hear again and again because you identify with it somehow.

I can definitely identify with Superbad. The premise is familiar: high school is ending; last chance to score; figuring out how to say goodbye to old friends. Almost ten years ago, this movie was called American Pie and nearly twenty years before that it was called Porky’s. But that’s irrelevant. High school is an inexhaustible source of comedic material, because 1.) it’s an almost universal experience and 2.) it is the most awkward time in most of our lives. Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse play a trio of friends who are getting ready to graduate and move on to the next phase of their lives. Seth and Evan (played by Hill and Cera respectively) are best friends who are on two different paths: the sincere and intelligent Evan headed for Dartmouth, the obnoxious but loyal Seth headed to some state university. Mintz-Plasse’s Fogell (aka McLovin) rounds out the group, but he's mainly a (hilarious) comedic device like Stifler (honestly, if Mintz-Plasse goes on to make other movies, I see his career taking the same arc as Seann William Scott's or Jon Heder-welcome to typecasting purgatory).

The film's plot is fairly threadbare: guys need to score booze to score with a few girls. The introduction of two cop characters played by (co-writer of the film) Seth Rogen and Bill Hader give the film a bit more meat (for better or worse). The strength of the film is its dialogue which is often laugh-out-loud funny and its subtle observations of interactions between pubescent boys and girls. The film is also fairly poignant as we watch Seth and Evan come to grips with the fact that their lifelong friendship could likely be coming to a close. The McLovin storyline will either make you laugh or roll your eyes (or likely both). It does wear a little thin after a while, but I never looked at my watch or anything. The movie starts strong, coasts a bit and then finishes strong. I enjoyed the characters so much (especially Cera's Evan) that I didn't really care though. Time will tell if the film goes into the Pantheon of Great Teen Comedies (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Can't Buy Me Love, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Breakfast Club, etc.). In the meantime, congrats Mr. Apatow, you've done it again.

Movie Pick of the Week

Judd Apatow is moving in on "must-see" status fairly quickly. I found this movie more consistently funny than The 40-year Old Virgin. It's the type of movie you might see twice, because you were laughing too hard and loud to hear all the jokes the first time. I only saw one trailer for this and it didn't look that funny, but I kept hearing good pre-release notices on the movie. Having watched it, I don't think you could make a general audience trailer that would make somebody want to go see this film.

I expect word-of-mouth to be great. It's long, but for me it honestly never feels padded and doesn't lose steam. Like most movies it follows its genre conventions in an almost desultory way, but I didn't care because it was so funny almost all the way through.

I would like to see Apatow learn to write women better. Paul Rudd's wife is a shrill, castrating, humorless brow-beater (seriously, would a woman say that her husband playing fantasy league baseball is worse than him having an affair?). Catherine Heigl is a bit of a cipher. We get enough of Seth Rogen's character to understand why someone might find him endearing after a while, but with Heigl, there just isn't much there. Yeah, she's pretty, but after that? What's frustrating about it is that she is at times likeable and you just wish you would have gotten more of what makes a character like hers decide to be with this guy who is somehow an utterly charmless charmer.

Enough of that though. The movie made me laugh. A lot. A whole lot. I'll be seeing it again. Just to hear Paul Rudd say, "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." again is worth $10.50.