Knocked Up (B) Judd Apatow is the filmmaker Kevin Smith wants to be. Stay with me here. While the both of them make light comedies (featuring chubby guys hooking up with attractive women) and adding a smattering of profane humour, Apatow's clearly the better writer/director. (For one thing, he tends to hire actual professional actors, as opposed to high school buddies and his wife, who can't really act, if you know what I mean...)
In Apatow's movies, the humour is in the characters making accommodations in their lives, and discovering that having a steady relationship is actual work, and while the joy is fleeting, the obligations are never-ending. The comedy comes from finding joy in one's obligations. In this one, stoner Ben (Seth Rogan) gets T.V. worker Alison (Katherine Heigl) pregnant after a fumbly one-nighter, and she decides to 1) keep the baby, and 2) let Ben know about it, and thusly, let him into her life because of the kid. Now, this is, for a lot of 'semi-pro' film critics, where the movie gets weird...
I've seen quite a few of these guys (and one girl) rip on this movie for Allison's decision to have her baby. Huh? I guess since they can't relate to her character, 'bortin' the kid would seem to make the obvious result. The problem with that is, firstly, there'd be no movie. And secondly, it's not like a light comedy intended to highlight the responsibilities (and joy) of being in a committed relationship is meant to be 'pro-life' propaganda.
Knocked Up had several other points that I found extremely endearing, not only for their relative rarity in Hollywood but also for their rarity in America. First, the notion that a child can justify an effort to make a relationship work - I know I'm being terribly old fashioned about it, but the idea that a marriage is not first and foremost a lovely frolic through love candyland, but a very pragmatic social unit with obligations within and without itself is a notion that's quickly being lost. The idea that a couple might stay together "for the children" is treated like some kind of parental Jim Crow law, and the concept that an individual might act in a manner that does not indulge his passions, but serves a more common good is actually given some respect in this film.
The other point the movie makes is that marriage and family is really, really hard. That is, the obligations never end, and the rewards are increasingly intangible. I've looked at the above critics who say that Paul Rudd's (Allison's sister's husband) character is clearly miserable and I don't think that they realize that Paul Rudd's marriage is actually pretty damned typical of any long term relationship. The things he complains about are ubiquitous; the fight he gets in with his wife about spending time together and apart is a fight that every couple who has been together more than two years has repeatedly. He's not unusually miserable, and the marriage is not unusually dysfunctional. They love each other, they love their children, but having a family is work and it looks just like that.
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next up is this parody video of the just-released Halo 3 for the Xbox360. I saw this before the actual promo, and had wanted to give Microsoft 'mad props' for making such a clever and funny take on 'gamer culture'. Since then I've seen the real promo, and it seems... well, kinda lame.
(video)
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