'Knocked Up' review

Rating: ***1/2 out of ****

Coming from a small town, my friends and I didn’t have much to do except go to work, come home and party, BBQ and talk about our big plans for the future. It’s fitting then that I could instantly relate to the characters in ‘Knocked Up’. That’s what makes Judd Apatow’s follow-up to ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’ so great – anyone can understand it. It is so instantly relatable on a wide scale that anyone (working professional, slacker seasonalist, stay at home parent) can understand who the characters are and what their motivations are. Moreover, they are likeable people that I wouldn’t mind knowing and hanging out with. Apatow guaranteed this by making them multi-layered people of right here and now. There is no generation gap here. This movie is so current the characters literally talk about going to see ‘Spider-man 3’, and re-watching ‘Munich’.

Seth Rogan stole the show in ‘Virgin’, at times upstaging the great Steve Carell. Here he plays Ben, a slacker who lives with his friends. Ben has a career goal: start a website highlighting all the best nude scenes from movies. Had he done a quick search on Google, he’d find several already in existence. One night at a bar, Ben meets Alison (Katherine Heigl), an up and coming executive at E! who has just been promoted and is out celebrating. After a few too many, they end up back at Alison’s apartment and due to a miscommunication, end up having unprotected sex. Sure enough, a few weeks later Alison is calling Ben to fill him in that she’s (drum roll…) pregnant! Ben’s reaction to the news is priceless. Meanwhile, Alison lives with her sister, Debbie (Leslie Mann) and her husband, Pete (Paul Rudd), who question Ben’s abilities as a father. They’re having problems with their own marriage. Their relationship is a nice juxtaposition to Ben and Alison’s. While one relationship is struggling to begin, the other is almost ending. Paul Rudd once again is brilliant as he plays a man who feels as if life kicked in a little too quickly. In one scene, he summarizes marriage to Ben as an unfunny version of ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ that lasts forever. Personally, some episodes of ‘Raymond’ can feel that way, but I digress.

From here, the story follows Ben and Alison over the nine months trying to develop a relationship but mostly trying to get to know one another. A lesser film would have had Ben trying to find any and every excuse to skip out on his duties or doing the bare minimum. Not here, as Rogan makes Ben a young man willing to change and mature due to his newfound responsibilities. You can tell that behind the profanity and razor-sharp wit, Apatow is a true romantic. The chemistry between Ben and Alison feels real. They grow to care for one another, never feeling forced or schmaltzy. Like ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’, here is a film that finds the perfect balance between bawdy, gross-out humor and a sweet, relationship comedy. It walks the line well, spilling equally into both territories.

Apatow has a talent for taking complex situations, which take place everyday, and placing them at the forefront of his movies. For example, he covered lifelong sexual/social ineptitude in ‘Virgin’. ‘Knocked Up’ handles the issue of ill-legitimate children. Apatow does not shy away from taboo subject matter; he places it right on display without it feeling gratuitous or exploitative. He’s making the freshest, most honest mainstream comedies today. Take the issue of abortion. It is inevitable that in this story – as in life – the question of abortion would rise. Apatow handles the situation so maturely that both left and right wings will be satisfied.

Running a little long (129 minutes), ‘Knocked Up’ feels like the extended edition of the DVD that made it to theaters. Nevertheless, I could sit and watch these characters time and time again. Should Apatow decide to revisit them, it’ll feel like catching up with old friends – they’ll just be taking their kids to go see ‘Indiana Jones 4’.