From the guy that brought us such gems as Anchorman and 40 Year Old Virgin, comes this surprisingly clever romantic comedy Knocked Up.
Writer/Director/Producer/Actor Judd Apatow wears many hats – he co-wrote and directed 40 Year Old Virgin, produced Will Ferrell’s Anchorman, directed the recently released Superbad, and is the director and writer of Knocked Up – now yours to own or rent on DVD or HD DVD.
Knocked Up follows the story of successful TV reporter Alison Scott and unemployed Ben Stone who meet at a bar and have a one night stand. After learning some time later that she is pregnant, Alison meets him again and they decide to put their differences aside and give the relationship a go for the baby’s sake.
Actor Seth Rogen returns from 40 Year Old Virgin to take the leading role in Knocked Up and does a wonderful job portraying underachiever with a good heart Ben. Similarly Grey’s Anatomy star Katherine Heigl pulls a solid performance, using a combination of subtlety and humour to portray career girl Alison dealing with her pregnancy and at-times-strange relationship with Ben.
There are a lot of really funny moments in this movie – Ben’s collection of friends are the source of a lot of giggles and their development of an online guide to nudity on movies called “fleshofthestars.com” offers more than a few laughs.
Similarly, Katherine’s depiction of her journey through pregnancy is sweet and honest, though always funny enough to avoid those sappy moments that you might expect a movie of this sort to head towards. There is never any real consideration of abortion in the movie, and some passionate viewers may feel the film is tending too far over to an anti-choice standpoint. However, it is likely that the film is simply more interested in looking at how the pregnancy affects characters Ben and Alison. And there is a very graphic depiction of how the pregnancy affects Alison during labour in one of the final scenes – consider yourself warned!
While Knocked Up is undoubtedly sweeter and smarter than you might expect from a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy, thanks no doubt to the skills of Director/Writer Apatow, we felt overall the laughs and the drama alike fell short to that of 40 Year Old Virgin. On the other hand, due to the subject matter and soap star Heigl this is probably the most accessible of Apatow’s films, so it is likely to have a broader audience. Still, if you liked any of Apatow’s other films, it is definitely worth watching. A very entertaining film.
