Knocked Up

I caught a matinee of Knocked Up on Saturday. Not for the easily offended, certainly not gonna be on any religious right top 10 list, but I thought it was excellent.

Judd Apatow has pulled off what a lot of first-time successful directors are most often unable to do. He has made an incredible follow-up to his previous hit that's actually a great companion piece to it as well. I give him tons of credit for not feeling like he had to do a total 180° turn from the 40-Year-Old Virgin and also for not re-treading the same material or attempting a sequel (no easy task there).

In seeing the trailers, I had a bad feeling that Seth Rogen was simply gonna replay his character from Virgin. Instead, he demonstrates that there's a lot of versatility in slacker/stoner roles.

In Virgin, his character was unapologetically tactless, cocky and had all of the answers as they applied to his life. In Knocked Up, he doesn't have it all figured out. He's aimless, insecure and socially inept to anyone outside of his circle of stoners. He's part of a group that, while they each have their own personalities, they seem to work as a hive mind with only enough cumulative brain cells to make one functioning brain.

Katherine Heigl does a great job within the context of this film, but her character doesn't distance itself far from her Gray's Anatomy character, at least from the first season and a half. The whininess her Gray's character has had of late has been grating on my nerves to the point that I've put CSI: as a higher priority on my DVR. Knocked Up is the way I wanted her character on Gray's to go. Shes a little more sure of herself, a little more articulate in expressing her true feelings and has a lower tolerance for bullshit. The main difference is that a lot of her frustrations on Gray's stem from deliberate acts by people who can't help themselves from pushing her to and over the edge of frustrations, where in Knocked Up it's the opposite. When she loses it, it's because of everyone being themselves.

Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann bring in some great point/counterpoint to Rogen and Heigl's situation. They go back and forth being role models and a cautionary tale to the new couple. This works brilliantly for conflict and for comic relief. In fact, the theme that works best throughout the whole film is that anyone (including Harold Ramis as Rogen's dad) that is approached for advice on what to do openly admits that they don't know what they should do.

It was brilliantly written, to the point that any of the plot holes I tried to find in it can easily be explained. At first, I thought that Rogen was a bit too quick in agreeing to be a part of the journey, but when he first meets Heigl in the bar, he laments that he missed his opportunity to talk to her further. He gets kinda bummed out until his friend acts as wingman to get him back in the game.

I also felt that they said "I love you" a little too soon, but then I remembered that these are two characters were mostly saying it because of they felt like that was what needed to be said. Their not entirely bullshitting themselves, yet not being completely honest...they're just trying to do the right thing.

SPOILER ALERT!!! One thing that bugged me was the disclosure of the baby's sex during a heated argument. One of the future parents didn't want to know, and I felt the other just blurted it out as if to say "Fuck you!" I kinda wish there had been a little more immediate regret over that disclosure, as if they didn't really mean to say it. Plus, I thought it would be pretty funny to have the baby be the opposite sex than what was blurted out. Maybe with a scene at the end showing them exchanging baby clothes.

A few hours after the movie, I was discussing it with the friends I saw it with, and my friend Amy brought up an interesting point. The film does show two people from different worlds, but every character is very much from a middle-class point of view. Money is never really brought up as a serious issue, while it is a minor subplot. Rogen may be poor, but he's not without options. It's not that he can't get a real job, he just doen't immediately respond to the kick in the ass to get one.

It's a major plot convenience, I'll admit. However, if both parents had been dirt poor, would this still be able to be a comedy? Or if one had been super-rich and one super-poor, would the audience be able to relate to it? I feel that's part of the film's brilliance. Both parents try to do everything right by the baby first, to the point that we as he audience can relax about that issue. We're able to go through the movie and focus on the relationships of the parents and those around them rather than worry too much about how the child will taken care of. And all that builds to a resolution that feels satisfying without feeling forced and sentimental without being too mushy.

Much like the 40-Year-Old Virgin, it's not entirely about growing up. It's about finding the proper balance between the way you used to be and the new person you're becoming.