Movie Review: Knocked Up

One of the best reviewed movies in America this weekend is also the best movie that I have seen this summer so far. In the last few weekends filled with one behemoth release after another, here's a little movie with unknown actors and a director, Judd Apatow, who has one hit to his credit, 40 Year Old Virgin. But as Judd himself says the expectations with the second movie are not that high after the first hit, because you are allowed to mess one up. Talking of messing up, Apatow sure loves messy situations and is a genius at bringing out humor in them.

Knocked up is a story of a one night stand gone all wrong. Ben (Seth Rogen) is pot smoking, carefree, twenty something Jewish guy who lives in LA with his other herb friendly buddies. He met with an accident when he was in high school 10 years ago and received fourteen thousand dollars and has been living of that money ever since. Alison (Katherine Heigl) is an up and coming host at E! TV channel. Both can't be more different than each other, she's beautiful, career oriented, nice and sociable, whereas Ben is this unkempt, chubby guy who's been forever trying to start a website (which gives information of the nude scenes of your favorite stars in their movies, much like Mr. Skin).  Anywho the story is about how they meet at a club, get drunk and have a one night stand (with some confusion around the condom) and the next thing you know is that Alison is pregnant. What follows is a fun ride which none of them wanted to be a part of and how they play along and ultimately end up together.

The movie is hilarious for the first one hour or so and has so many one liners packed in that you might miss some of those between laughters. However after that the movie begins to lag and starts falling into a more romantic (read chick flick) routine. Some of the sequences seem forced, like that Vegas trip, but overall the movie works. There's nothing new about the characters. Almost every stoner comedy has some variation of the male leads shown in this movie. Same could be said for Alison's sister and her brother-in-law (Paul Rudd). Inspite of this the situations and the lines in the movie's first hour are worth the ticket price.

I think this movie will be a huge DVD hit and I am definitely watching it again for all the missed jokes. Major props to Judd Apatow for creating another uproarious comedy, he will be a director to look out for. I don't know if Seth Rogen will go Donal Logue way (who after Tao of Steve was just relegated to second or third leads in movies), but he sure has more potential than him and could play interesting characters. If he's not successful in films there's always sitcoms to look forward to. Katherine Haegl is very good looking and I am sure would get a lot more movies after this.

In my opinion people will associate differently with this movie depending on their marital situation and who they are watching with. My review is a point of view of a single male who watched it with a mixed group of people. Some of the married folks looked a bit uncomfortable for some reason, maybe because of the treatment of the situation. Anyways I think the movie deserves a solid three and a half stars for making me laugh so hard for the first time this summer.