The searing, endearing new comedy “Knocked Up” is either the most potty-mouthed chick flick to come along in years, or a stag film with a heart of gold.
Seldom have such shockingly profane lines been delivered in service of such traditional family values. Writer and director Judd Apatow makes movies that advertise red-hot pepper flakes on the outside, and deliver talcum powder. Crass and caustic jokes rub the tongue raw, only to be followed by a big drippy orange Creamsicle of self-improvement, hope and monogamy.
And it all works – hilariously, poignantly, beautifully – because Apatow (“The 40-Year-Old Virgin”) chooses actors who can pull off his challenging mix of material. In Apatow’s last major project, Steve Carell was less an aging virgin than a timeless romantic. Here, Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl aren’t so much knocked up as knocked about by the withering demands of newfound adulthood.
Yes, there’s some pot in the junk drawer and some porn on the DVD shelf, but in the driveway there’s a minivan with government-certified child safety restraints.
Apatow’s basic building block is as old as Hollywood: the mismatched pair. Rogen is Ben Stone, living with an inspiringly unambitious crew of post-college slackers. Their dream is creating a website telling men the exact time in every movie DVD when stars get naked – if only the spilled bong water doesn’t blur their meticulous notations.
Clubbing one night in a clean T-shirt, Ben meets Alison Scott (Heigl), as far out of his league as, well – let’s just say Yankies payroll/Rockies payroll. She’s a smoking-hot blond with a promising career in television. She lives with her sister (Apatow’s real-life wife, Leslie Mann) and brother-in-law (Paul Rudd) and kids (Apatow’s real-life kids), in a bickering but basically happy fog of suburbia.
Shot senseless by tequila, Alison sleeps with Ben. “Good thing I’m drunk,” Ben crows, mid-event, “This is lasting forever!” The next morning, one look at Ben’s beached -whale midriff launches a regret in Alison’s eyes that stretches back to the dawn of mankind.
Of course she gets pregnant – spoiler alert! Don’t read the title of this movie! – but Ben doesn’t even have a cellphone to take the fateful call. Alison’s nieces have cellphones they can dial from their car seats, for crying out loud. Who IS this guy?
Ben’s posse, meanwhile, puts the venal in juvenile. As he takes her phone call and imagines a second night of bliss, their triple-X pantomime would give Adam Sandler pause.
Apatow gives just enough background to make these miscreants human, as in Ben having lunch with his father (Harold Ramis):
“I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you?” Ben asks his father, incredulously. “I feel sorry for you.”
Rogen’s job is fairly easy, as he is a natural slob with generally harmless tendencies.
Heigl has the much tougher assignment, to play the statuesque blond who can slug it out with the slackers and the pottymouths without turning into a harpie. She’s got comic chops, and despite her beauty, seems like any other Enraged Girlfriend when she screams at Ben in her car.
Apatow helps her out by showing how in Alison’s TV world, nobody is ever quite perfect enough. She endures humiliating coaching sessions with her smarmy boss (Alan Tudyk), who suggests not that she lose weight, since saying so would be illegal, but that she work out a little to get, maybe, “tighter?”
The story gains parallel strengths with Alison’s home life, as her sister’s marriage groans under the usual weight of family duties. Rudd may want an affair, but then again, he may just want free time, which prompts this pitch-perfect attack from Mann: “You think because you don’t yell, you’re not mean. This is mean.”
Earlier, Big Sis imparts her wisdom about husbands to Alison: “You criticize them so much, they get down on themselves, and then they’re forced to change!”
Apatow goes on too long, more than two hours when the ideal length for comedies is closer to 90 minutes. You could slice three or four scenes from “Knocked Up” without missing much, including the obligatory guys’ trip to Vegas, though you’d miss an interesting discussion on hotel chairs. Apatow’s main problem is that he’s a skilled writer with an ear for human foibles, and, as his own director, he’s is reluctant to cut a few good lines in order to make the great lines stand out.
Still, I doubt you’ll see a funnier movie this summer than “Knocked Up.” Apatow has clearly earned the unusual mantle of chief chronicler of modern family life in all its profane glory.
His movies are blue, no doubt about it. What makes them wonderful is that they are true blue.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at mbooth@denverpost.com.
| “Knocked Up”
R for profanity and graphic language, drug use, sexual content and generally crude humor| 2 hours, 5 minutes|COMEDY|Written and directed by Judd Apatow; starring Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann and Jay Baruchel|Opens today at area theaters.
