‘Knocked Up’ makes unplanned pregnancies a laughing matter
Now you’d think a movie about a one-night stand that leads to an
unwanted pregnancy wouldn’t be a great basis for a comedy. But Judd
Apatow and the cast of
”
Knocked Up
”
pull it off in a great way.
‘Knocked Up’ makes unplanned pregnancies a laughing matter
Now you’d think a movie about a one-night stand that leads to an unwanted pregnancy wouldn’t be a great basis for a comedy. But Judd Apatow and the cast of “Knocked Up” pull it off in a great way. I was a little skeptical at first, especially when a co-worker told me the film was the most accurate portrayal of relationships and marriage he’s seen in a long time, and he happens to be a very cynical man when it comes to relationships and marriage.
After seeing the film, I think he’s right. The movie is funny because there are all these moments were I could see little glimpses of places and situations I’d been in. I’ve seen people end up together through pure coincidence. I didn’t end up with my first boyfriend because I spotted him in a crowd of people and was drawn to his goth clothes and body piercings – it was because he was friends with the girls who lived next to me in the dorm so he was around ALL the time. And there might have been a little alcohol involved…
People do seem to just stumble into relationships – for good or for worse – and they do sometimes try to stay together when it’s clear they don’t really fit. And that’s the premise of this film. Alison (Katherine Heigl) goes out to a nightclub with her sister (Leslie Mann) to celebrate a promotion. There she runs into Ben (Seth Rogen) who is just out to get wasted with his friends as he does pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The club scenes were some of the funniest in the movie because I’ve lived in Los Angeles and spent some time doing the club thing while I was in grad school. The long lines outside the door are real. The bouncer selecting the elite few to cut the line is real. And there is always one woman who gets really drunk and starts asking, “I’m really hot, right? I’m hotter than all these other girls in here, right?” Women always say they like to go out dancing, but really they just want to see how many guys will hit on them even when they totally wouldn’t date any of those guys.
After Alison and Ben have their mostly unmemorable tryst, the morning-after breakfast makes it clear that the two are a mismatch. Alison is a driven career-woman who has just gotten her big break doing on-air interviews with E!, the celebrity news network. Ben mostly just smokes pot and hangs out with his pervert friends who are all trying to launch a Web site that will allow movie watchers to find out exactly when in a movie celebrities flash some skin.
Despite their differences, the two make a go of it when Alison finds out she is pregnant two months later. The relationship makes for plenty of funny moments and showed that there is never one right person or one wrong person when it comes to the problems encountered in a relationship.
Take Alison’s sister and her husband (Paul Rudd) who are great foil for the main characters. Pete is an affable, if a bit of a bumbling guy, and he just shrugs it off when his wife constantly yells and nitpicks at him. But it’s clear that despite all the ways they irritate each other, Pete and Debbie really do care about each other. No relationship is perfect, but if it matters enough and there’s not too much misery going around, it’s a noble effort to try to make it work.
The only criticism I have of the movie is that so much more screen time was given to Ben and his friends, Alison’s character came across as a little flat. It was clear she was supposed to be a motivated, control freak so it was a little hard to believe she would actually call her one-night stand and ask him to go with her to the hospital to get her pregnancy test and expect him to do the right thing. Plus, I kept thinking of her as Izzie Stevens from “Grey’s Anatomy” and expecting George ( T. R. Knight) to show up any minute. It’s definitely worth a watch and it guarantees a lot of laughs.
