October 25, 2007

Knocked Up - $3

Knocked Up is a needlessly vulgar, unrealistic movie with far less laughs than I expected. This may have been the most disappointing movie I've seen this year.


I went into Knocked Up with very high expectations, this was supposed to be an intelligent and refreshingly realistic comedy and almost every critic has been praising it. I am going to disagree with the critics here fairly strongly.

I'll first tell you what I liked. The performances of the four main characters are all quite good and there were certainly a few funny moments in Knocked Up. Some of the dialogue is very intelligent and witty, but this is the minority of the movie unfortunately.

My main problem with Knocked up is the lack of plausibility in the story. I know it's just a comedy but in any movie the story does need to be believable and this one is not. Basically Ben (Seth Rogan) has a one night stand and Alison (Katherine Heigl) gets pregnant. When Alison decides to keep the baby they decide to try to make the relationship work. All believability ends here.

Ben is an unemployed loser who lives with unemployed losers who are all more disgusting and vulgar guys than any I've ever met. Alison is a beautiful woman with a promising career in television broadcasting. She is about four divisions out of Ben's league and though I can believe that she would want to make an effort with the father of her child she starts to like Ben pretty quickly without much reason.

I think I was supposed to see a transformation in Ben as the movie went on to being a more responsible guy willing to do what it takes to make this whole thing work out. What I saw was a guy stay unapologetically a loser and really only at the tail end of the story does he make some minor changes in his life by moving out on his own and (gasp) getting a job.

Besides the major plot line being outside the realm of reality for me I also just didn't find Knocked Up all that funny. What laughs there were came from witty dialogue but most of the humour stemmed from pretty simplistic potty jokes.

Overall Knocked Up is really just a vulgar movie. I'm not trying to say all movies need to be polite and star PG characters but most of the humour in this one is just unoriginal.

Knocked Up just didn't work for me. I know I'm in the minority with this opinion but there you have it.

I put Knocked Up on my 'Don't Watch It' list and give it a value of $3.

5 comments:

Sheamus the... said...

I am far from a comedy lover and watch very few that I ever really like...and yes the movie is very vulgar, BUT I really liked this one or maybe I just relate.

Tony Tanti said...

that's what I'm hearing from most people but it really didn't connect with me

I also saw the rental "unrated" version so maybe the theatre version was better.

Sidenote: I've always thought the "unrated" release of movies when they get to rental is dumb. Actually adding in deleted scenes to the regular runtime of the movie is ridiculous. They were cut for a reason.

Sheamus the... said...

its a money making scheme mi amigo...

Tony Tanti said...

No doubt but why can't they make it another option on the dvd to watch the original version? I want to see the movie that the director and editor intended me to see.

Jon Coutts said...

i don't ever want to see this movie in all my days