Posted on 06/04/2007 10:50:30 AM PDT by finnman69
It’s a little bit of a stretch to find a whole lot to admire in this weekend’s box-office success Knocked Up. In it, as you can guess, the leading lady (not exactly the right word), Alison Scott, played by Grey’s Anatomy beauty Katherine Heigl, gets knocked up after a drunken one-night stand with an unemployed 23-year-old slacker super-sized bonger slob (Seth Rogan). The f-word works overtime in the script, there’s lying, and Ryan Seacrest.
And Ryan Seacrest may be the most admirable character in the movie — he makes fun of himself in his cameo. The fictional characters, on the other hand, are all self-obsessed — parents acting like children, grandparents appearing long enough to make clear these twenty- and thirty-somethings didn’t have the best examples growing up.
But when Ben’s slacker housemate (one of four, most of whom are mean and dirty, in all senses of the word) Jonah suggests the “A” word to father-to-be Ben Stone (who usually is stoned), his couch-potato crude loser friends can’t even contemplate the possibility. They even voice the word “kill.” Though Ben is very upset when Alison announces that her dozen or so drug-store pregnancy tests indicate she’s pregnant, he quickly realizes he reacted badly and slowly rises to the occasion — in the traditional ways, and also in ways you’d expect the director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Judd Apatow) to show you. When Joanna Kerns (formerly the mom on Growing Pains) tells her daughter Alison to do what her sister did — think of her career (she’s an on-air interviewer at E!) and have a “real baby” later, when the time is “right” — there’s no question you’re repulsed. Alison’s going to choose to keep the baby and — besides there being no movie if she doesn’t — she doesn’t even seem to seriously consider the option. There’s no anti-abortion speech, she just does it: She just chooses to take responsibility for her remarkably irresponsible night out. She calls Ben and he sweetly provides support, echoing the words of his thrice-divorced but loving father (played by Harold Ramis).
In Knocked Up abortion is presented as an option whose time has come and gone. You don’t get a baby “taken care of,” not when you can see the little one and her heartbeat on a monitor on the first post-conception doctor visit. Not when even loser Ben’s dad can tell him he’s the “best thing that ever happened” to him. Not when we know that Alison’s sister had an unexpected pregnancy, and that Alison wouldn’t have that beautiful but bratty six-year-old niece she loves.
That’s the refreshing part of the movie: There’s no question it embraces life. If you stretched optimism a little bit further you would see some kind of ode to marriage in it. First off, even Ben, whose only real relationship is with his bong, thinks he should “make an honest woman” out of Alison — proposing to her with an empty box and a promise that there’s a ring to come if he ever makes a killing off his “job” (a not-yet-launched website showing hot actresses in their movie nude scenes). And instead of laughing at the sitcom model of bitchy wife (played by Leslie Mann) abusing the nice-guy husband (Paul Rudd), we watch a mean wife nearly ruin her marriage. While hitting a club to celebrate her sister’s promotion (and her whole source of confidence being that she knows men there would want to have sex with her), she’s got her own husband so unhappy he feels the need to lie to her about his fantasy baseball league. (Not that he’s a model husband either; he lies about going to work when he’s actually going to a movie.)
The only reason we have hope for these characters is the baby, who only appears at the end. The baby doesn’t destroy Alison’s career. The baby nurtures a love between Alison and Ben, a very unlikely couple. The baby ultimately brings the unhappily married (for no real good reason) Debbie and Peter back together.
But as delighted as I am for the Knocked Up message that sex has consequences (including unexpected joy and transformative love) and parents have responsibilities, there’s something about Knocked Up that still leaves one a bit disturbed — and a little depressed. It’s pro-life and pro-marriage in its crude way. And it’s important that Hollywood isn’t making pro-life, pro-marriage movies just for more conservative audiences. Maybe I’m getting old, but it seems to me that the Wedding-Crashers-40-Year-Old-Virgin crass-blockbuster fun has been had. While I’m all for redeeming messages (keep the baby, love the child, take some responsibility for your life) reaching us where we’re at, if this is where the culture is — 23-year-olds filling gas masks with marijuana smoke — is it really an excessively laughing matter? (And I say this as someone on record as excessively tolerant.) With vagina shots and jokes and a bit of a celebration of loserism, Knocked Up ultimately allows its beautiful aspects to be overpowered by its disturbing ones. It isn’t a likable-loser crude comedy. It’s a this-genre-may-have-just-hit-rock-bottom comedy.
the crowd where I saw it was mixed and everyone was laughint out loud. In fact I missed some good lines there was so much laughing.
I saw The 40 Year Old Virgin 2 weeks ago. Lordy, I could not stop laughing! That was some funny shizzle!
I also have to disagree with the assessment that this hit rock bottom in crudity. Yes there are dirty jokes, lots of them. But the banter between the characters is just so so good, the writing was excellent. Almost every line was a memorable line. Very much in the style of wedding crashers and 40 year old virgin. refreshing to have a comedy w/o Will Ferrell BTW. Many actors from 40YOV are back in this movie.
Another comparison I made, is in real life this movie is not likely to happen, but isomehow the 40YOV story was.
Loved this movie.
I imagine it’s a stupid movie just like so many out there.
It sounds like a good exhibition of typical Boston-area college kids. Complete idiots who will eventually want everything that conservatism has to offer, but only “someday”.
While they are young, they pride themselves in liberal-everything, until forced to deal with the aftermath.
I love Steve Carell but 40 year old virgin was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. The F bomb was dropped so many times it was ridiculous and I’m no prude. I turned it off after 30 minutes.
It’s hilarious, but I hard a hard time getting past a young, beautiful, focused, ambitious Katherine Heigl going for the slacker, dope-addled Rogen character. She’d have been better off having the baby on her own.
She hit the nail on the head. There IS this very strong pro-life message, but they really went overboard with the graphic nature of some of the scenes. Also the profanity: the f-bomb just isn’t funny. The only times I’ve seen the f-bomb actually carry a funny scene came during “Planes Trains and Automobiles”, and “GlenGarry Glen Ross”.
But the continuous profanity kept draining my sympathy for these two. You root for Seth Rogan because you just know he’s going to come around, but getting there is so painful at times, it’s almost not worth the trip.
I’ve been a big fan of Judd Apatow since “Freaks and Geeks”, but I think he sold out to the “gross-out” genre instead of building a great movie around smart - not tasteless - dialogue and imagery.
I am embarrassed to say that I actually bought that movie.
I thought it was funny the first time, but the second time around, it was just too much....and I am not very picky at all.
I loved Wedding Crashers, Old School etc.
The Bruce Almighty sequel looks good though.
Agreed, totally unbelievable. But hilarious anyway.
It definitely was a chick flick in disguise.
Freaks and Geeks....I remember that. Great show.
Hilarious but meaningful movie. I saw it with a friend and will see it again with my husband soon—the movie is sort of repulsive in a lot of ways but it also definitely presents abortion as a repulsive, horrifying “solution.”
(I don’t use foul language, ever, but didn’t even notice the movie’s bad language, really.)
Hey, they went for it. It was a R rated movie, and it will still end up being a huge huge hit.
I didn’t think there was all that much cursing. Just a lot of dirty jokes and dirty references.
Agree, agree! Profane but smart, hilarious dialogue.
If you liked GlenGarry GlenRoss, you'll love this.
Glen & Gary & Glen & Ross (Warning: Extreme Profanity, but very funny)
I thought Ben’s transformation from uncouth loser to employed, protective, decent, nice guy was believable. By the end of the movie he was even actually attractive and worthy of the goddess in all respects. (And, for the record, this is a woman’s point of view.)
Yeah, I saw the previews for that - it looks cute but I’ll probably wait to rent it. At $10.00 a pop I’ve become a bit more discriminating in the movies I go to see.
What’s good about the movie is that its pro-life message is hip and potent and will be delivered to an audience that usually hears only the opposite.
Do you not have a local dollar theater? It costs 2.50 at a theater in Wichita with the movies coming out a month or so after they stop playing elsewhere.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.