Great expectations

>> Hilarious, warm-hearted pregnancy comedy Knocked Up is one of the best movies of the year

by MARK SLUTSKY

A shambling, goofy, dirty-minded but warm-hearted rom-com about the implications of unplanned pregnancy, Knocked Up is this year’s most likeable movie, and, let’s get straight to it, maybe the best American comedy in years. The movie’s written and directed by Judd Apatow, whose most recent hit was the excellent The 40 Year Old Virgin, and whose credits read like a list of hilarity highlights from the past couple of decades: writer/producer on The Larry Sanders Show, producer of the better Will Ferrell movies and, let us not forget, creator of the brilliant, short-lived Freaks and Geeks.

That show marked the beginning of his partnership with actor/writer Seth Rogen, who’s been in countless Apatow productions but finally takes a starring role in Knocked Up. Rogen plays Ben Stone, a Canadian slacker living in L.A. with his fellow shiftless buddies (the movie starts with a brilliant montage of their idiotic antics, set to Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”—for me it was love at first sight).

Somehow, Rogen manages to hook up with a gorgeous, totally out-of-his-league blonde (Katherine Heigl). What would appear to be a one-night-stand between the doofus (who’s working on a Web site that tracks celebrity nudity in the movies) and the bombshell TV presenter gets a lot more complicated when Heigl discovers she’s pregnant and reluctantly lets Rogen into her life.

Rogen and Heigl’s opposites-attract relationship will be familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a rom-com, but Knocked Up makes the formula seem fresh. Much like Catherine Keener’s love interest character in The 40 Year Old Virgin felt way more real than that kind of role usually does, all of the characters in Knocked Up, even the goofy supporting roles, feel more like people than comedy archetypes. And the cast is terrific all around: in addition to Rogen and Heigl, who are great, there are appearances by vets of both Freaks and Geeks and The Office, as well as strong showings by Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann as Rogen’s new in-laws.

Knocked Up is also hilariously filthy, full of amazingly taboo-shattering trash talk and the best kind of pop-cult bullshitting, and yet, despite its dirty mouth, it’s never nasty. It would be hard to over-praise what is not just the best comedy of the year, but maybe the year’s best movie, period.

Knocked Up opens this Friday, June 1

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