Judd Apatow, 2006
For possibly the first time, like, ever, a mainstream film has arrived with an alarming amount of accurately ascribed adoration.
Basically everything that I’d read about this film and had been told about this film by people who’d seen it had been oddly uniform in its praise of genius Apatow’s wonderful and naturalistic direction, the nuanced and seemingly deeply workshopped characterisations, and the overall success of its approach to that most difficult of cinematic tasks: creating a bona-fide temporal universe, populated with supporting characters that add depth to the lead character’s arcs without either dominating the scenes (pick any number of Big Hollywood cameos) or being transparent and contrived paper-thin plot-evolvers (I’m looking at you Monster’s Ball, you fuck).
Now, we’ve been here before. When American Pie arrived, trailing praise for its depth of character and its noble humanity, y’all motherfuckers went crazy forecasting some brave new shit for the previously anti-lovable world of teen comedy (and Pie was even the newest spawn of that most critically loathed teen movie off-shoot: T&A!), and in many ways this film is as much the resulting evolution of the seeds sewn by American Pie as it is another microverse in the ever-expanding Apatow galaxy.
My first thoughts on this film: only a couple days after seeing this wonderfully written comedy – and make no mistake, it is wonderfully written – I can’t actually recall any great lines from it. Whenever I see a Woody Allen film, or even see a less consistently funny ‘writerly’ comedian like Albert Brooks’ work, I will always walk away with some zingy lines that – regardless of whether I even liked the lines or not – I can recall like a line from a book that I’ve read and seen with my own eyes, then re-read a dozen times; that lasting impression that a great sentence can have on me being my favourite thing about the written word. Here, tho, everything doesn’t just feel improvised, nor is it just actually improvised: it actually sounds like people speaking; a minor revolution in contemporary film-making, and the basis for all of the open-mouthed ”no script!” calls on its production.
Opening with Dirty’s awesome Shimmy Shimmy Ya and a funny/corny/authentic crosscutting sequence illustrating the incompatibility of Rogen and Heigl, it instantly situates itself as audience-friendly entertainment, a promise it delivers on and, kinda amazingly, doesn’t forget, even as it wants you to remember that babies come out of bloodied vaginas after inappropriately “matched” “adults” have drunken sex. AND that that’s ok. Which is, of course, amazing, and a little revolutionary considering most film treatment of Big Issues falls short of incorporating the mess and mud of real Earth-life.
Parents give their kids advice, and sometimes it’s shitty, sometimes it’s just their perspective, and sometimes it’s the goddamned truth. Friends are always gonna have yr back, and that’s not always a good thing. Honesty is not always the best policy, because nothing will always be any one unchanging thing. Family is awesome. Family is fucked. Family is endless.
And Knocked Up’s ace: Love is never “LOVE”. It’s time, luck, necessity, and a bunch of other things that are difficult as shit to dramatise. It’s the most organic thing this side of organisms, and that is what makes it so amazing. REAL LIFE, PLAYBOY.
Date movie? Fuck that. See this shit with yr parents, and look yr Dad in the eyes afterwards and understand.
