Knocked Up

Starring: Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel Directed by: Judd Apatow Runtime: 129 min. Rated: R Release date: June 1, 2007 - More Info
READER RATINGS:
8 OVERALL	Smart . . . . . . . . 8 Sexy . . . . . . . . . 7 Funny . . . . . . . . 8.5

The Nerve Review

How gratifying it is to have your high expectations exceeded. Many who saw Judd Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin wondered about Seth Rogen, who played Steve Carell's colleague and dispenser of bad sex advice ("You've gotta wait till the seed grows into a plant. Then you've gotta fuck the plant.") The notion of that guy impregnating a girl on a one-night stand is a perfect comic haiku. It practically writes itself, but I'm glad Apatow and Rogen wrote it, because they've again delivered the funniest, sweetest comedy of the year. And all that despite a birthing scene that ought to be rated PG-38.

Rogen plays Ben, a schlubby twenty-three-year-old who plans with his friends to start a website devoted to celebrity nudity. One drunken night, he hooks up with the ambitious and beautiful Alison (Katherine Heigl) in a bar. (What follows is probably the only sex scene ever set to the B-52s' "Rock Lobster.") Ben reasonably expects not to hear from Alison again, so he's delighted when she calls, then appalled when he finds out why. You can guess from the preview that everything ends well, but Apatow pushes the film to some surprising darkness in the interim; Virgin's insights about relationships get further developed here, to rewarding effect. Even with just the jokes, Knocked Up would be a great way to spend two hours, but it also moves you with its honesty. Apatow gets the expected laughs when Ben watches Alison's gynecologist put her into the stirrups, yet when the doctor confirms their suspicions, he makes you feel their real dread, and it's heartwrenching.

This is the best kind of populism. It's as mainstream as it gets, but it sacrifices none of its humanity to get there. It's an ideal date movie, and. . . you know what? I could go on and on. But let's talk about it after you see it. — Peter Smith

Other Reviews

The Village Voice
Robert Wilonsky
"A terrific film — one of the year's best, easily."
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The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
"Unexpectedly touching."
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LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
"At once too broad and too tender for satire, his comedy is realism plus exaggeration, plus dirty talk, plus an unexpectedly sweet moral core that tells us life's a mess in which the best we can do is grope and muddle our way to a kind of decency."
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New York Magazine
David Edelstein
"A knockout. Apatow's talent is for telling complicated truths about the peculiar ways in which people defend themselves from the pain of living — with jokes."
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Your Reviews

Is KNOCKED UP a great film? Yes, and no. To me, a great film requires astute direction as well as writing. Apatow is an astoundingly adroit observer of human behavior, but for now, he's a firmly commercial director. Which is to say, there's nothing particularly daring here. But I'll keep our fingers crossed. In the end, KNOCKED UP is that rarest of birds, a summer film (and a monster hit) about the vagaries of human interaction, the twists and turns of fate that lead folks to embark on long, difficult journeys. The best news of all may be that honest movies about human behavior can still offend. At the showing I attended, about six or seven elderly women sitting in the row behind me (chatting away throughout the film) rose en masse and exited the theater as Ben's roomies launched into a spirited discussion about bowel movements.