50/50 (Jonathan Levine, 2011)

As I walked out of 50/50, I was struck by the realization that it didn't get funny until the protagonist got cancer. If nothing else, that speaks to the unorthodox nature of the film. No matter, young Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) gets cancer after only a few minutes of awkward establishment. 50/50 is your usual Apatow-style funny/sentimental movie but with cancer, to which some might reply, "Remember Funny People?" This is different. Where Funny People used the threat of an illness to prompt a reevaluation of life and career. But Adam Lerner is not George Simmons. He's too young to have a life to reevaluate. He's still building the career he can look back on later. As Adam says during a breakdown late in the film, he's never even told a girl he loved her.

That flecks 50/50 with an affecting quality I'm not sure is fair but cannot deny hit me hard, especially in its last 40 minutes. Based on screenwriter Will Reiser's own bout with cancer at 24, the film clearly displays the guidance of someone who actually lived this life rather than looking for some easy quirks. That is not to say that the film doesn't suffer from some questionable touches, but at least it takes its subject seriously, even when it's milking cancer for laughs.

Kung Fu Panda 2 (Jennifer Yuh Nelson, 2011)

If the best sequels build off their predecessors in ways that progress and deepen the shared material, then good sequels must at least avoid simply rehashing the original. In many respects, Kung Fu Panda 2 feels like the first installment of a franchise that, to be frank, never needed to be a franchise. But apart from a too-comfortable relationship with fat jokes in times of crises, the film never comes off as a retread. My favorite aspect of the first film was its respect for Chinese culture, incorporating its art and architecture—the latter, in my opinion, being the most beautiful in the world—with reverence as it played around in the digital sandbox. That sense of appreciation of the culture, even if it is a background for Jack Black's decidedly non-classical style, extends to the sequel, and I found it funny how the faithfully rendered Chinese palaces and pavilions almost seemed a flight of fancy on the part of the animators because of their beauty and grace.

If the first film occurred in tucked away villages and training halls, Kung Fu Panda 2 moves deeper into the urban sprawl of feudal China, massive collections of homes under the watchful eye of a pagoda so large that, were it any taller, God would strike everyone in it with different tongues to stop all communication. But the religious elegance of the pagoda, like the rest of Gongmen City, also carries a grim sense of oppression, one heightened when a wrathful prince returns to reclaim the throne his horrified parents denied him so long ago.

Funny People

I may at last have seen an Apatow Productions film that could benefit from the inevitable extended cut on DVD. Strange, considering that, of the three films he's written and directed and the seemingly dozens of others he's co-written or produced over the last five years, this one suffers the most from his bloated running times. Funny People, however, needs a longer cut, or at least a version that substitutes new scenes for old, bloated ones.

Ideally, a re-cut of the film would drastically alter its third act, which is really a fourth act and possibly a fifth. All two (or three) of these final acts are resolved in the last five minutes of the film, and therein lies the problem. Funny People is Apatow's most personal project yet, and an objective hand needed to step in to revise the structure.

Oh well, if he insists on making a two-and-a-half hour dramedy, Apatow certainly knows how to stuff it to the rafters. George Simmons (Adam Sandler) learns that he suffers from a rare, life-threatening blood disease at the start of the film, and that he only has an 8 percent chance of survival. An hour later, however, he recovers. That leaves 3/5 of a film to handle the dissipated tension.

This structure is the film's strength and weakness, because it opens a bold, real type of movie that seeks to relay its message naturally, without plot contrivances or a need to get plot out of the way first. On the other hand, a film about a person coming to terms with a near-death experience and bettering himself as a result should address that experience, something Funny People constantly sidesteps.

Filling the gaps in the first hour (and the rest of the film) is a small group of struggling actors and comedians who share an apartment in L.A. Ira Wright (Seth Rogen) works a deli counter by day, but his real passion is stand-up. Noticeably rough around the edges, Ira nevertheless manages to slightly impress George, who came to the comedy club to vent some of his fears and frustrations on stage. George hires Ira to write jokes and, eventually, to serve as a full-time assistant, much to the jealousy and awe of Ira's flatmates Leo (Jonah Hill), another amateur comic clearly destined for the big leagues, and Mark (Jason Schwarztman), a moderately talented actor who scored the lead on an insufferably painful sitcom about a teacher connecting with inner-city youth.

Rogen and Sandler carry the film, and they both produce some of their finest work. It's a shame, that some people profess an exasperation with Rogen, as he's finally nailed down a style that allows him to utilize his impressive gift for improvisation while remaining on-topic. His Ira is wonderfully and hopelessly awkward on-stage, and he provides the film a beating heart to replace George's calloused, blackened one in the reflective moments. Sandler channels that darkness he brought to the fore in Punch-Drunk Love; still funny but searching for life's meaning, George at last realizes his solitude after a lifetime of losing himself to the false love of Hollywood, and Sandler beautifully captures the pain of a man who has everything but the only woman he ever loved.

That woman is played by Apatow's wife, Leslie Mann, who must shoulder the burden of much of the film's drama. When George shows signs of recovery, he attempts to reconnect with her Laura, and Mann brings serious weight to a character who must reconcile her lingering feelings for George, her anguish and resentment concerning her husband (played by an alternately loopy and intimidating Eric Bana in an interesting role clearly, tragically cut down in post-production) as well as her fears of divorce. She doesn't fully factor into the story until the last hour, which is a vital mistake because she lifts it out of the mire of its bloated middle section. Mann stole the show in Knocked Up, and she nearly does so here, though Schwartzman reigns triumphant with his irascible, pompous jerk.

Funny People is unlike anything Judd Apatow has ever made or produced, indeed unlike any comedy-drama that I can think of at the moment. The near-death epiphany is a well-trod road, but filtering it through the bleak no man's land of stand-up comedy gives it an edge. Most people tend to think of stand-up as some glorious job that lands you fame, wealth and nookie, but in reality most spend their whole lives struggling to even pay the rent (when they're even home, that is). Incidentally, when I was a kid, my friends used to encourage me to become a comedian when I grew up, not realizing that A) half of the jokes I told from the ages of 5-15 I'd cribbed from films and television and B) they were essentially trying to condemn me to a life of poverty and crippling cynicism. Notice how George, who broke out of the stand-up circuit and into Hollywood megastardom 20 years ago, returns to the stage as much out of fatalism and resignation as a desire to recapture a moment of youth.

That's what makes the massive flaws of the film all the more glaring: it has so much going for it. For all its dark comedy and interesting characters, it spends far too much time repeating segments to pad the length. Only two Yo Teach! clips should have stayed in the final cut, and the first act needed to leave a good 15 minutes on the cutting room floor. In the final, shortest act, Apatow bombards us with both Ira and George's relationship woes, an argument between Ira and his friends and conflict between George and Laura's husband (which in turn leads to conflict between George and Ira), and then he seeks to resolve all of these threads in a disjointed semi-montage. It undoes much of what makes Funny People great, and it results in a film that manages to connect enough to warrant a ticket purchase but severely disappoints in the end. Its most damning aspect, though, is that, for a film about bettering oneself, George never really changes until the final moments. What, then, was the point of sitting through those repetitive two-and-a-half hours?

Freaks and Geeks

Ever since I sat down with Firefly in late 2006, I've found myself slowly working through the list of "brilliant but canceled" television series that continue to prove that networks promote crap over genius and that it's fundamentally our fault. Maybe if people didn't treat American Idol like a presidential election and give Jay Leno 17 years of fantastic ratings, we could have nice things. Many of them, despite their short lifespans, belong on any serious list of the greatest shows of the last 20 years, if not all time. Arrested Development. Pushing Daisies. Sports Night. But I took my sweet time getting around to perhaps the mother of all brilliant-but-canceled fare, Judd Apatow and Paul Feig's adored Freaks and Geeks. I've been hearing about this series ever since The 40-Year-Old Virgin became a hit, but for whatever reason I never shelled out the dough for it. Perhaps because I was still in high school at the time, I didn't want to see yet another attempt by a bunch of old guys to narrow teens down to clichéd stereotypes -- it didn't help that the show was called Freaks and Geeks. The only meaningful high school movie that addressed all the cliques without making the types the focus was Dazed and Confused.

Freaks and Geeks, to my utter amazement, makes Dazed and Confused look as stubbornly locked into teenage archetypes as The Breakfast Club. Yes, the geeks are geeky and the freaks are freaky, but the way each character differs and matures in the space of its 18-episode run should have guaranteed it multiple seasons, a massive fanbase that included both teenagers and wistful adults, and stardom for its immaculately-chosen cast. By narrowing the scope to only two of the various high school cliques (though by no means excluding the rest), Apatow and Feig give themselves the room to actually delve into these tropes, subverting some stereotypes while playing into others -- but not without exploring why they might actually be true.


Set in the 1980-81 school season, Freaks and Geeks primarily centers on Lindsay (Linda Cardellini) and Sam Weir (John Francis Daley), two well-off preppies who get straight A's and spend their time in A.V. club (Sam) and the Mathletes (Lindsay). But their grandmother's death shakes Lindsay, who suddenly begins to question religion, what's important and her purpose in life. So she dons an old Army jacket and sets about rebelling in just about the gentlest manner possible. Meanwhile, Sam and his friends try to survive and maybe even get lucky despite the dual hurdles of their geek and freshman statuses. It's the simplest setup you could ask for, but in no time these characters grow in fascinating ways, some of which might seem initially contrived but are treated with enough gravitas to never come off as forced.

Lindsay soon stumbles across the titular freaks, and what a grand bunch they are: ever-stoned, romantic Neil Peart-wannabe Nick (Jason Segel); James Dean-esque rebel Daniel (James Franco); viciously sardonic Ken (Seth Rogen); and perpetually enraged Kim (Busy Phillips). They hang out under the bleachers, in empty corners and simply off-campus. They initially regard Lindsay with all the clichéd derision you'd expect, but within no time some of the group accept her -- especially Nick, who is clearly taken by her from the start. The first few episodes show Lindsay slowly ingratiating herself into this gang, winning the friendship of all of them while not simply abandoning the core of her character established in the pilot.

Sam doesn't interact with as many people. Like a proper geek, he doesn't need more than a few buddies; "I've already got 2," he chimes when he's encouraged to meet more people, "how many more does a guy need?" He hangs with Neal (Samm Levine), who fancies himself a comedian, and Bill (Martin Starr), who's allergic to everything but his own body odor. Every now and then, they mingle with portly Gordon Crisp and Harris, who may just be the missing link between overachieving nerd and burned-out freak.

Most of the episodes start with a typical high school situation -- drug use, hosting a party when the parents are away, a car accident -- but all of them play with the conventions through my most favorite of storytelling techniques: "little moments." Freaks and Geeks is, quite simply, the single greatest "little moments" series ever made by someone not named Joss Whedon, and even then it's not an easy choice to make. When Mr. and Mrs. Weir leave for the weekend and soon the entire school is invited to a party, the geeks decide to have a little fun by switching the keg out with non-alcoholic beer, only for everyone to fool themselves into acting drunk via the placebo effect. But the current running under the episode is Nick's despair over John Bonham's death, a depression that delivers nothing but comedy gold when he begins to explain away some questionable decisions as a product of the booze (which isn't really booze, remember) and grief. It's the sort of thing that might warrant maybe one reference just to tie the episode to the time period, but they play it up like a major character died.

At that's just one little moment of the second episode. Everything is gold: Lindsay going to hell and back and blowing money meant for her college fund to secure a fake I.D., only for the club bouncer not to card her. Neal's incessant mentioning of his bar mitzvah that spans the series. Anything and everything that Martin Starr does. Mr. Weir's Korea story that starts seriously and ends in straight-faced absurdity. How Jason Segel never falls into pothead clichés despite having to act high in the majority of the episodes. It's all so natural that you can't tell where the improv ends and the scripting begins -- unlike the explosion of films to come from these collaborators down the road.

But the kids are just the tip of the iceberg. Dave Allen steals nearly all of his scenes as recovering hippie guidance counselor, Jeff Rosso, who means well but can't ever find the right balance between authority figure and someone the kids can trust as a friend. His attempts to condense hippie ideology into keywords and phrases that belong on crap pamphlets highlights the hilarious tragedy of the love generation and how he's really not far removed from all of his friends whom he claims grew up to sell out and run companies. Tom Wilson (you know him as Biff Tannen from the Back to the Future series) plays the gruff, slightly unhinged gym teacher we've seen a thousand times, but he adds a third dimension when he helps Sam deal with all of his confusion and terror concerning sex education and women. Later, he even starts dating Bill's mom, leading to an uproarious trip to a go-kart park to try to curry the geeks' favor.


Lindsay's parents are the best of all: Becky Ann Baker is warm but stern as Jean, and Joe Flaherty, oh man, Joe Flaherty. His Harold is the most overtly sitcom-y aspect of the series: whenever his children express a desire to go to a concert or blow off school, he never fails to have a story on hand about a childhood friend or a celebrity who did the same thing (to a much greater scale of course) and wound up broke, infirm or dead. But he can also pull of the sentimental moments without slipping into that mawkishness that all too often accompanies the abrupt switch from absurdity to profundity. When Nick hides out at the Weir home after his father sells his massive drum kit, Harold teaches the kid a thing or two about real drumming -- and isn't a shame that so few young 'uns don't know about Buddy Rich? -- and gives the boy what may be the first positive encouragement he's ever received, and it feels completely true to the character despite no prior evidence that he could act in such a manner.

Most of the time, we the audience are lucky if each of us can identify with one of the characters, but I saw a part of myself in all of these kids. I knew Sam's inability to hold a conversation with a girl without setting himself as "just a friend,"though at least I never had to field that crushing "you're like my sister" response that poor Sam endured. I had Lindsay's early life crisis, albeit I made it all the way to college before I realized I had no idea what I wanted from life. I spent my freshman year conversing via comedy film quotes like Neal, Lord knows I suffered from Nick's naive, borderline disturbing romanticism, though thankfully I never quite resorted to stalking people.


That relatability with the characters makes it difficult to pick a favorite. Nevertheless, I think I'd have to side with Nick: he has a touch of the romantic in him, but he doesn't know how to show it properly. Clearly he's seen too many movies and read too much poetry, and he tries to apply those exaggerated depictions of love to his high school relationships. He so deludes himself by interpreting Lindsay's friendly gestures as advances that he more or less enters into a relationship with her by acting like they've been dating for months. When Lindsay breaks it off, he spends much of the season trying to win her back, lapsing into unintentional creepiness. It's not that he's some future rapist; he really does think he's being sweet, but he just doesn't realize how unsettling his behavior is. Throw in his troubled home life, his love of drumming and his utter lack of ability for said passion -- he spends more time ensuring that he has dry ice and strobe lights ready than honing his craft -- and you've got the most realistically and endearingly creepy teenager ever depicted on-screen. I found myself uncomfortably identifying with him as the character brought up memories I'd prefer to remain repressed, but Jason Segel's natural charm makes him goofy and harmless as opposed to disturbing.

As hard as it is to pick a favorite character, choosing the best episode is even more of a challenge. There are no plots that don't work, and each episode takes the characters in new places. There's "The Garage Door," in which the geeks slowly uncover Neal's father's affair; the hilarious juxtaposition of Lindsay's first joint and Bill's allergic reaction to a peanut in "Chokin and Tokin"; Daniel becoming a punk rocker to win the heart of a spike-haired pogo-er. They're all hilarious, but the king of them, and in many ways the bedrock for Judd Apatow's eventual box-office success, has to be "The Little Things." In it, Ken, who'd found his sardonic match in Amy, discovers that his new girlfriend was born a hermaphrodite and spends the rest of the time wondering if he's gay. Even if you're suffering from Rogen overexposure, watch the scene where he plays heavy metal, David Bowie and disco to see which type of music -- and therefore, whether or not he's gay -- affects him the most. His facial expressions alone make his subsequent ubiquity well-deserved.

Ken's crisis is juxtaposed with Sam's disastrous relationship with Cindy, for whom he pined the entire series, only to score a date and realize what a terrible, shallow person she was; so many shows make these sort of relationships perfect and the fulfillment of those characters, and it's great to see someone be honest and say that often people don't turn out to be as great as you might think. You know the relationship is doomed when she not only doesn't like The Jerk but is actively derisive when Sam tries to make her happy. Ken and Sam end up having a conversation that reveals how lucky Ken is and how miserable Sam is, in a moment that doesn't insist on itself even as it proves to be one of the most insightful and sweetest scenes in the entire series.

Plenty of shows about teens growing up fancy themselves dramedies -- Gilmore Girls, even Buffy in a way -- but there tends to be a clear line between the laughs and the tears. No such line exists for Freaks and Geeks. Feig and co. have a way of writing moments that pull big laughs out of dark situations. I'm not referring to Office-esque squirm humor; it's something wholly theirs. You get a taste of it in the very first episode when Lindsay tries to stop some boys from teasing the mentally-challenged Eli (played by a young Ben Foster) only to accidentally call him 'retarded,' at which point Eli runs away in frustration only to fall and break his arm. Other so-dark-it's-funny moments include Sam's conversation with Neal's dentist father over whether or not Sam saw the man with his lover while the kid is sitting in the dentist chair, the screaming argument Kim has with her parents while Lindsay watches helplessly, and Harold trying to reaffirm his love for Jean by way of comparing her to pot roast and saying how he thinks of her when he stocks fishing poles. It's the kind of stuff that either shouldn't be funny or can only be mean-spirited, but the tone is never mocking, which makes it all the funnier.

That's not to say that the only humor is severe, however. Some of the greatest moments are just good old-fashioned light comedy. When Jean cooks Cornish hens to change things up, a confused Harold plays with the thing in a manner not unlike Chaplin's dinner roll dance in The Gold Rush. In the midst of the hilarious non-alcoholic party, Nick and Millie's duet of "Jesus is Just Alright With Me" steals the show. Any song that Jason Segel performs, really -- from clunking around on drums while imagining himself as the next Peart to his self-penned tunes like the infamous "Lady L" -- is guaranteed to be a moment of comedic genius. But my personal favorite has to be Sam taking advantage of Styx's "Come Sail Away" to get a romantic slow dance with Cindy, only for the song to speed up in the middle and leave him befuddled. Everyone who doesn't know how to dance has been in that situation: anyone can slow dance, but when you're trapped with any up-tempo number and can't get off the floor, it's terrifying.

Speaking of music: I've seen a lot of T.V. shows and even more movies, and I've never come across anything with such an amazing soundtrack. Never mind the ratings; this show would have needed American Idol numbers just to afford the song rights. The very first scene of the series tells you exactly what you're in for in a moment of audio-visual beauty: it opens with flowery music as a pretty jock professes his undying love for a prettier cheerleader, only to move under the bleachers into Hades with the freaks just as Van Halen strikes up. That moment tells you everything you need to know about the series even though its best aspect is its character growth. Van Halen plays a big part in the show's sound, as does Rush. Elsewhere, Black Flag, Ted Nugent, Billy Joel and Cream find the right note for each scene. There's even an entire episode founded upon a undercurrent of The Who. No wonder it took them four years to release a DVD; fans owe a great deal of gratitude to Shout! Factory for fronting the money for the actual music -- almost all of which is perfectly synched to the characters and their actions -- instead of insisting that they insert cheaper songs as other manufacturers asked.

As pointless as it is to compare the two, and as much as it feeds into my inability not to judge all television by the standard of Joss Whedon, I must admit that Freaks and Geeks has surpassed Firefly in my estimation as the greatest gone-too-soon program ever produced. Where Firefly worked in a area totally its own, forging unique and fully realized characters amidst fantastic plots, Freaks and Geeks does the same in a genre so played out and so hackneyed that it's a downright miracle that it could be so knowing. The numerous commentaries (at least one for each of the 18 episodes, and extra 10 on top of that) reveal how every moment dripped with the personal experiences of the writers and the improvisatory cast, and the presence of a few fan tracks only reinforce how familial the characters are not only with the cast and crew but the viewers as well. Freaks and Geeks plays like the lovechild of Cameron Crowe and Joss Whedon at his most literal, but with a charm and approach that entirely belongs to the writers and the perfect cast. You will never see a better, more timeless depiction of high school life.

Observe and Report

Jody Hill might have a long career as the anti-Apatow if he can just cut down on the insufferable drag in his movies. Indeed, as much as Apatow and his crew's films have that tell-tale lag in the middle, they have nothing on the moments of excruciating downtime in Hill's fun but overrated debut The Foot Fist Way. Observe and Report, one of the most deceptively marketed films in recent memory, makes FFW look downright taut in comparison.

As with The Foot Fist Way, Observe and Report follows a pudgy, sad outsider as he slowly gives into his disturbing psychosis. Also like the protagonist of his debut, Seth Rogen's Ronnie slaves away at a laughable job he badly performs. But that job is all he has and he treats it with absolute sincerity. Head of security at a local mall, Ronnie stalks the corridors and the stores, fancying himself a real officer of the law as he curses all those who irk him while remaining oblivious to the jeers of everyone. His ragtag band of guards aren't much saner than their leader, and some of them look forward to the day they can carry real firearms in the mall.

As Ronnie walks around, medicated on mood levellers to stave off complications from his bipolar disorder, only one person snaps him out of his disturbing reveries: Brandi (Anna Faris), the ditzy, slutty blonde who works the makeup counter. When a flasher exposes himself to the young woman, Ronnie sees his chance to be the hero and win the girl, and he vows to bring the pervert to justice. Then a detective (Ray Liotta) shows up and steals all of Ronnie's imagined thunder. Before long, the film many worried would be yet another Paul Blart morphs into a comedic Taxi Driver, or at least that's what it strives to be.

Brandi becomes a major source of contention among detractors, and for good reason: some truly vile things happen to her, and we're meant to laugh. First, Ronnie forces her into a date by refusing to let her leave the mall until she acquiesces. Then he gets her so drunk that she can't walk, and we cut to Ronnie having sex with an unconscious Brandi, complete with vomit on the pillow. But it's not date-rape, say the filmmakers, because Brandi snaps out of it long enough to ask a slightly concerned Ronnie "Why are you stopping?" I guess it's funny because she's a slut, but Ronnie still had sex with a woman clearly too intoxicated to give any real form of consent.

And that's not the only time Ronnie goes beyond the pale. When he stops taking his medication and, as a result, fails the psychological exam of his application to the police force, the mall guard slips into ultra-violence worthy of a Scorsese movie. He assaults one of the food court operators (Patton Oswalt) for insulting his friend Nell (Collette Wolfe), bound to a wheelchair after ankle surgery. Skateboard punks receive a beating that would make Tommy DeVito flinch. There's even a preposterous and completely unfunny showdown in third act.

Then there's the ending, one of the most graphic and hysterical scenes I've ever watched. I don't like to call things this early in the year, but I seriously doubt I'll see a funnier scene this year than the final chase. Indeed, the film is often quite funny, but at least half of the film is drag. Hill seems to believe that by making Ronnie a psychopath with an alcoholic mother (Celia Weston in a show-stealing role), he has crafted a dark comedy. Not so: he really just made a slapstick with political incorrectness. Sometimes it works, but often -- particularly the date-rape scene -- are just there for shock value and greatly take away from the funny bits.

Nevertheless, the film's got gall, I'll give it that. When it clicks, it's one of the more original comedies in recent memory, so audacious it almost begs you not to laugh. But more often than not it mistakes lulls for atmosphere and development and genuine offensiveness for boundary pushing and satire. So it's a bit of a failure, but a noble one. I still recommend it, if for no other reason than the final ten minutes.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin- Unrated Version

I swear, every time I sit down with this film, I have this preconceived notion that it's not quite as funny as people claim, that I think its edge has dulled a bit, then I actually watch the film and laugh as hard as I did the first time. If you held a gun to my head and demanded I explain why I continue to think the film will hold nothing for me when it always keeps me completely entertained, I'd have no answer for you. While Forgetting Sarah Marshall may very well eclipse 40YOV as the chief representative of Apatow Productions in my book, this will likely stand as the best thing Apatow himself directed for some time to come.

Based on a concept originally conceived by Steve Carell in his Second City days, The 40-Year-Old Virgin is one of those films that tells you everything you need to know right in the title. Carell plays the lead, Andy Stitzer, a genial, socially awkward nerd who works the stockroom of an electronics store. He knows all the ins and outs of the hardware, but he's too shy to be a salesman. At home, his walls are packed with mint condition action figures worth a small fortune, but of course he'd never sell them. He's bit of a stereotypical nerd, yes, but with enough charm to at least bend the archetype if not break free of it.

At work, his colleagues waver between sympathy for Andy's maladjustment and fear that he might one day kill them all. After all, he looks like the last person in the world who'd snap, and those are the ones you have to keep an eye on. Eventually David (Paul Rudd), Cal (Seth Rogen) and Jay (Romany Malco) invite him to a poker game, where they all end up sharing lurid stories of past sexcapades, and press Andy for an anecdote of his own. At last, the truth comes out: Andy's still a virgin.

For the rest of the film, these three do everything in their power to get their new pal laid: they teach Andy how to interact with women and how to attract them, but Andy resists. Most of the information he gets from his friends is emotionless and sexist, designed solely to lead to a one-night stand, but he wants an actual relationship. Nevertheless, he does follow his friends to clubs and even manages to pick up a thoroughly trashed young woman (played by Leslie Mann) and ride home with her in an achingly funny scene.

Slowly his friends bring out some confidence in Andy, and he not only lands a spot on the sales floor but meets Trish (Catherine Keener), a sweet woman who runs a store across the street that sells people's unwanted junk on Ebay. Why would anyone use a middleman for Ebay? No one knows, and it's a recurring joke, though thankfully it only gets mentioned a few times. Trish is roughly the same age as Andy and a mother of three, one of whom has a child of her own. Though the two hit it off and she wants to sleep with Andy, sex isn't high on her list of priorities, either.

The middle sags a bit, as it apparently must with AP movies, but then again I'm watching the unrated cut. I never got to see this in theaters because of age limits, so I made do with the DVD.* Several scenes, chiefly the Date-a-Palooza, drag on to get in repetitive gags that weren't even that funny to begin with. I also have a beef with Kat Denning's character. Since the film I've come to enjoy her, but her character here forces her to be in hysterics the whole time spouting absolute nonsense to her mother like "How come you get to have sex when I can't?!" which is nightmarishly stupid even by self-absorbed teenager standards. She eventually bottoms out into a likable character, but it's evidence of the weak female roles that populate most of the films Apatow puts his name to these days.

Nevertheless, even in this extended version--17 minutes longer than the original cut--The 40-Year-Old Virgin is well-paced and screamingly funny from start to finish. If Knocked Up contains just enough laughs to be worth it, this goes above and beyond the call of duty. Only one or two scenes really falter, and the rest get across both laughs and heart without having to gear-shift between them. Apart from Dennings' bawling teen brat (I refuse to blame her for what was simply a bad character) and Keener's narrowly-defined role, everyone puts in great work and every character (even Dennings') gets at least one big laugh. There are a few obvious moments--like Andy's saccharine lines to Trish near the end-- but overall the film achieves a great balance between the filth and the sugar, and damned if I'm not entertained every time.


*I know that Blu-Ray versions of the film come with both versions, and if you want to send me money for a PS3 I'll happily upgrade.

Knocked Up — Unrated Version

The more I watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall the more I see the flaws in the relationships found in other major Apatow Productions. On the one hand, there's The 40-Year Old Virgin, certainly a wildly funny film, but Catherine Keener's character more or less rests on a pedestal and almost seems like a deus ex machina than an actual human being. But at least that film centered on Steve Carell's character Andy; Knocked Up, on the other hand, absolutely depends on both its male and female leads, and it suffers greatly for it.

Ben (Seth Rogen), a chubby stoner, spends his days getting baked with his friends (a number of former castmates from Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared essentially playing themselves, same names and all) and designing a web site that lists the titles of movies in which actresses appear nude and when the scenes occur. Allison (Katherine Heigl) works for the E! channel and lives with her sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) and brother-in-law Pete (Paul Rudd). One night, Allison and Debbie go to a club to celebrate Allison's promotion; meanwhile, Ben and the gang show up at the same club. Somehow, Ben wins Allison over and, despite her sister's warnings and signals, she stays to party with the schlub. Then she invites Ben back to her place for some hot love-maki- cuddling and snuggling, kids! The next morning brings cold sobriety, and the two part, putting the one-night stand behind them.

8 weeks pass. Suddenly Allison comes over with morning sickness all the time and realizes with horror what it might mean when a co-worker (Bill Hader in a scene-stealing bit part) suggests she could be pregnant. Sure enough, there's a bun in the oven, and it belongs to Ben. When she seeks him out and breaks the news, he gives just about the most unexpected reaction I could have heard in reaction to a pregnancy, and I used to watch Maury. It's funny and vicious and it sets up a tension between the two that drops far too quickly in favor of sentimentality. When it rears its ugly head again, the blame gets uncomfortably placed on a hormonal Allison.

But it's the sentimentality that wears me down more and more with each viewing. Ben has a meeting with his father (Harold Ramis), who's overjoyed with the news and kindly supports his son. His father's geniality turns him around, but we get no such moment for Allison. The common sense answer to her problem would be abortion, leading to the equally sensible response "Well, then, there wouldn't be a movie would there?" but that doesn't excuse the fact that we get no real reason for Allison to keep the baby. But whatever, she does, and Ben announces he'll support her decision. Soon they're a genuine couple, picking out baby clothes and gradually changing each other.

All this might have worked if the characters were well-written enough, but Apatow shoots for improvisation, not character depth, and it shows. After the film became a hit, Katherine Heigl went on record saying that the film was sexist because it portrayed the women as "shrews" and boring and, while it's certainly biting the hand that feeds and her argument would have a lot more clout if her follow-up was 27 Dresses, she has a point. Personally, I think the film turned out that way because it more or less gave all the screen time to Rogen and his buddies to show off their improv skills, while the women had to basically stay within the script because they needed to be the mature people in the situation. Why mature people can't get more chances to get laughs is a bit beyond me, but whatever; some people just can't write for women.

This clear disconnect between funny improvisational moments and Let's Get Down To Business really hurts the film, and a great deal of the jokes fall flat, particularly in the beginning. The entire first sequence, for example, could easily been cut if it didn't half-heartedly introduce Ben and his friends amidst the slew of lame jokes. Things pick up in the club and they generally remain very funny throughout, but the moments of exposition grind things to a halt, especially in the sagging middle. At some point I found myself focusing more on the subplot of Pete and Debbie's rough marriage, because it went for the dark laughs and mixed pathos with killer one-liners far better than the stop-start nature of Ben and Allison's relationship. Really, they're the reason I keep coming back to this film.

However, one moment does combine the two with flourish, and that's the delivery scene. Emotions overflow, and it results in a madcap, gloriously filthy sequence that remains one of the funnier scenes of recent years. Even if I no longer care more most of the lead-up, I never grow tired of these moments. Some may object to a certain visible object, but I thought it was hilarious. I mean, how often do you see a birth on film from that angle?

This used to be perhaps my favorite of the major products of Apatow Productions and, looking back, I cannot for the life of me figure out why. With the possible exception of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, all of the big AP movies drag, but none as overtly as this. Nevertheless, it's got enough gags to keep me coming back occasionally, and I particularly love the show-stealing moments from Alan Tudyk and Kristen Wiig. Knocked Up, sweet though it may be, doesn't offer any real insight into characters who have to grow up fast to deal with a serious situation (see Juno for that), and you can never really see why Allison would stay with Ben. However, I really do laugh for most of its running length, and isn't that what matters?

Note, I should mention that I am referring to the extended cut of the film, not the theatrical, so like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, its entirely possible that trimming the DVD fat would boost this film significantly, and when I check out the original version I'll write a little addendum if my opinion of the film changes significantly.

P.S. I rarely mention much about the DVD itself, but really, Knocked Up has to be one of the best DVD packages ever put out for a film that isn't some established hallmark of movie history (think Criterion). It's loaded with fake behind-the-scenes documentaries funnier than the film itself, complete with blistering improv segments from Ken Jeong, who plays Dr. Kuni. The only person who gets comedy DVDs that even rival this is Kevin Smith.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

2008 is shaping up to be a banner year for romantic comedy the same way that 2007 wound up being a revival for Westerns. Hot on the heels of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Wall*E” (which is technically a children’s film but calls to mind the great silent romantic comedy “City Lights”), slacker guru Kevin Smith offers up “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” a film that stacked up controversy long before it hit theaters thanks to its provocative title and its tongue-in-cheek posters.

It’s also one of the funniest films of the decade and the perfect blend of Smith’s own “Chasing Amy” and “Clerks II.”

The plot is summed up by the title: Zack and Miri, two lifelong best friends who find themselves on the verge of bankruptcy after letting the bills pile up, decide to get out of debt by making, you guessed it, a porno. Along the way, they recruit a gang of cast and crew, think up erotic film parodies and ultimately confront deeper feelings for each other. On the surface it looks like a standard romantic comedy with a wacky premise, but that doesn’t take into account Smith’s gift for dialogue.

Fans of Smith’s will recognize the vulgar, rapid-fire wit and the pop culture references, but this time around he also injects moments of truly uncomfortable humor that calls the sitcom “The Office” to mind. After all, this is a film about two friends who have to come to terms with how they really feel for one another; awkwardness is part of the equation. Rogen plays his usual schlub, but for the first time you can buy that he’s paired with an impossibly beautiful (and impossibly single) woman.

The characters, from the leads to the supporting cast, are all quirky and interesting. View Askew alumni Jeff Anderson and Jason Mewes hold their own against Rogen, the current king of comedy, while newcomer (in America, at least) Ricky Mabe gets a lot of laughs with a handful of screen time. Porn starlet Katie Morgan and infamous ex-porn star Traci Lords show off some surprising chops, and Justin Long’s cameo as a gay porn star is brief but instantly memorable. The best of the supporting cast is Craig Robinson, who steals nearly every scene he’s in as Delaney, the racially sensitive de facto producer of the porno.

The only downside of the film is that it’s looser than Smith’s usual fare, perhaps due to the influx of all these improvisers into the film of a man who prefers his actors stick to the script. As a result, occasionally meanders, and a speech from Robinson near the end is so formulaic and schmaltzy that it’s almost uncomfortable. But, as Roger Ebert noted, Smith throws so many gags at you so rapidly that anything that doesn’t connect is quickly lost beneath three jokes that do. The rapid-fire humor is all the more surprising considering how plot-relevant most of it is; most comedies exist as a series of gags, but this is one long joke.

Probably the most refreshing and surprising aspect of the movie is Miri, and by extension Elizabeth Banks, who is breaking out in a big way this year (“Role Models,” W.”). Females in slacker comedies, be they Smith’s films, Judd Apatow’s, or even the British sitcom “Spaced” are often the focal point of maturity. The ladies will hang out with the dudes, but they always grow up a lot faster. Miri is an exception; she swears with the best of them, avoids work even more studiously than Zack does, and, unlike most female slackers, not only gets the pop culture references but makes some herself. Yet she is also keenly aware of her femininity, another rarity in the slacker world. Miri is, quite simply, the best, most charming, most relatable female character to come along since Daisy from “Spaced.”

Ultimately, the film’s brief lags and the rare moments towards the end where the inevitability of romantic comedy cliché seeps in cannot derail such a continuously uproarious flick, and the surprising chemistry between the two leads and strong supporting cast make this possibly the most outrageous comedy since “There’s Something About Mary.” Any moment that feels stale or awkward is as necessary as the big jokes; the discomfort makes it all the more real and tender, and the romantic dialogue is the most powerful, realistic and original since the dialogue in Smith’s own “Chasing Amy.”

Smith’s most accomplished film yet is a surefire hit, and you’d have to be crazy to miss it. Oh, and sit through the credits.

Pineapple Express

This year has already given us one great Apatow Production in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (still the funniest film of the year so far), but the second Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg written film, Pineapple Express, gives it a decent run for its money. It’s not as well crafted as FSM, but, like that film, doesn’t go more than a few minutes without raising a laugh.

The story follows Dale Denton, a processing server who loves weed, and his amiable drug dealer Saul, who flee a drug supplier (Ted Jones, played by Gary Cole), his hitmen, and corrupt cops after Dale witnesses Ted murdering a member of a rival drug supplier. What follows is a hilarious if slightly uneven mash of action and comedy, and it’s sure to entertain.


Seth isn’t really exploring new ground here. All his characters are slight tweaks on a core model: in 40 Year Old Virgin, he was a gruff but lovable schlub whose was eloquent enough to get laid. In Superbad he was a simple cop who used his position to try to look cool. In Knocked Up, he was just a schlub full stop, initially a prick but eventually lovable. Here, he’s a pathetic schlub thrust into an impossible scenario. Seth’s kind of a chubby Tom Hanks playing Tom Hanks. He’s just different enough in each role to not make me worry for his acting future the way I do for Michael Cera, but he’s still getting a little too one-note for comfort.

James Franco, however, puts in the performance of his career. In the Spider-Man films, I found him great as the pained kid who just wanted his father’s love, but I found him insufferable, whiny, and completely un-intimidating when he became the New Goblin. Here, he positively inhabits the role of Saul, capturing all the blankness of a habitual pot smoker without going out of his way to highlight his short term memory loss or his empty-headedness as well as making him lovable. It’s a strange year when, in the first 7 months, the two finest acting performances are a clown villain in a comic book film and a stoner in an action-comedy.

After Dale witnesses the murder (and they don’t mess around, you only have to wait about 8-10 minutes before the plot gets underway), the two ineptly dodge Ted’s vengeance: they run to the woods but forget that Ted’s bought cops can track their cell phones. Even when it dawns upon Saul, they don’t take proper steps. They go see Red, Saul’s middleman supplier who buys from Ted and sells to Saul, even though common sense would dictate that Red would be the first person Ted went to. From there it spirals into an explosive, if predictable action-comedy that errs on the side of action.

The focus of the jokes isn’t so much one-liners (though there are plenty of those), but in capturing the absurdity of Dale and Saul’s situation. Conversations are jumbled; everyone frantically talks over one another, making lines hard to filter out. I, however, like this method, because too many comedies let people in an argument speak one at a time so jokes can be heard. Here, it feels like you’re really watching two paranoid stoners who (quite rightly) think they are going to die at any second. The comedy only gets better when Red is introduced. He is at first an asshole and seemingly an antagonist, but, in the film’s third act, manages to steal the show even from James Franco. He’s crazy, simple, and screamingly funny. By the end of the film, he is somehow alive and somehow the best part of the film.

The action scenes are too jump-cutty, but they are where the film stands out. There is a massive fistfight, car chase, and a massive ending gunfight to keep you entertained. The scenes convey a great deal of the film’s humor, yet they are fairly decent action scenes in their own right. It’s not nearly as good a blend of humor and action as Hot Fuzz, but it’s a damn sight funnier than just about anything else out this year.

It’s not all great, though. Seth’s girlfriend serves no purpose other than to make him look pathetic, and her story ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly. My biggest complaint is actually Gary Cole. I love Gary, but he’s at best mediocre as a crazed drug supplier and, at worst, awful. His right hand man is a corrupt cop, played by Rosie Perez, who one can actually understand these days. Both mistake Dale and Saul for professionals sent by their rivals The Asians. Mistaking idiots for pros is uncomfortable familiar to Dumb & Dumber and a host of other films, and this doesn’t really feel unique enough to forgive that. Also, there is a predictable romance between Cole and Perez that is forced and doesn’t even manage to be funny in a “hey look how forced this is” way.


Anyone who goes into this film hoping for a great pot comedy will be crushingly disappointed; pot is merely the MacGuffin here. However, I was relieved; there are few things less funny than pot humor, and I was afraid the film would be a misfire. In fact, not only is the film not pot humor, it shows the flaws of stoners. Don’t get me wrong, the film is purely pro-pot, but Rogen and Goldberg write two stoners who are lovable but pathetic. Dale is in a job that requires little effort just so he can smoke all the time, and he is dating a high school girl. She keeps begging him to meet her parents, but he is scared, which is probably smart since she borders on jailbait. Saul is even sadder: he sits in his apartment watching old 227 reruns surrounded by electronic gadgets so he never has to leave. Pot comedies beat you over the head with how guys who are normally losers are thrust into a magical world of adventure and hot chicks when they smoke pot. Pineapple Express shows two guys who could possibly survive their ordeal if they’d just stop smoking for 2 hours.

As I said, there’s too much action and not enough comedy, but James Franco and Danny McBride make this movie and keep me rolling for the entire film. Gary Cole was weak, but I think the writing has as much to do with that as his portrayal. It’s not the best film I’ve seen, but I must say I laughed more than I do with all but the best of comedies.