Geek vs Life

Coming off the success of 2005’s hit, 40 Year Old Virgin, Judd Apatow had nowhere to go but down. At least thats what everyone expected from him when Knocked Up was first announced..

Apatow is well known for directing TV shows who have had the plug pulled on them before they ever reached their stride. Shows like Undeclared, Freaks vs Geeks and The Ben Stiller Show, all which never got a chance to see a second season. The critics loved the shows, but the audience never came and the networks lost their patience. Finally with the help of a few friends like Seth Rogen, his time has come.

The premise of Knocked Up does not seem like a funny one at first. It’s the tale about a one night stand that goes horribly wrong when Ben Stone (Undeclared’s Seth Rogen) impregnates Alison Scott (Grey’s Anatomy’s Katherine Heigl). Stone is a pot smoking, porn watching, out of work and living off his Bar Mitzvah money, Canadian with a beer belly and Scott is a pretty blond TV reporter on E! Television. How they meet, consummate the act and learn to love each other in 9 months is only part of the fun. Stone lives with a hilarious cast of roommates and Scott lives with her sister, her husband and her two kids.

Apatow is highly skilled at making the secondary characters as important as his leads. For example, Paul Rudd’s (also seen in Apatow’s 40 Year Old Virgin, redeeming himself for ever appearing on Friends) storyline of a husband and father of two kids is as funny as the whole Stone and Scott storyline. Apatow turns what could have been a one trick pony kind of movie and turns it into an ensemble cast of sorts that just seem to gel together from begining to end.

As with 40 Year Old Virgin, the movie is coarse, vulgar yet the conversations do not seemed forced or placed there for humors sake. Here are some sample quotes:

Ben Stone (Seth Rogen): “Steely Dan can gargle my balls.”

Jay (Jay Baruchel): Man, my balls are shaved, my pubes are trimmed, I’m ready to fuckin’ rock this shit!
Jonah (Jonah Hill): What the fuck, man? If I go in there and see fuckin’ pubes sprinkled on the toilet seat, I’m gonna fuckin’ lose my mind! Last time I went to the bathroom, Jay, I took a shit and my shit looked like a fuckin’ stuffed animal!

But as with Virgin, the true strength of the movie lies in it heart. The humor almost takes a backseat to the main story about how one person must change his life and leave his childhood behind to become a man to take care of his child, and his responsibilities. If Apatow can make you laugh along the way, all the better.

See the Knocked Up trailer below:

Also coming out this Summer, look for the Rogen written comedy Superbad being released on August 27th. As always, preview the trailer below.