Knocked Up: Split Decision

Shockingly just one week late, the wife and I dragged ourselves to the theater to see Judd Apatow's latest paean to traditional values. We were expecting more. After the movie, the wife asked if I thought the movie was as good as its overwhelmingly positive buzz, because she didn't think so. My first reaction was that I agreed: Apatow crafts his films out of natural, honest stories about characters he knows and cares about and the mixed-in juvenile humor serves as counterpoint to the serious topics on hand. On reflection? I won't be buying this on DVD.

Obviously, the fact that the movie is about a pregnant woman is a pretty big problem for us. We hate children and find pregnancy revolting, so trying to ignore that and concentrate on the relationships is difficult. Humor-about-pregnancy isn't funny if your stomach is churning. The requisite scene with Seth Rogen's Ben Stone trying unsuccessfully to have sex with Katherine Heigl's pregnant Alison Scott had a couple of chuckles, but mostly I just felt sympathy for the poor slacker forced to touch the parasite-laden gut.

I'm not kidding.

Toss in a house of stoner-slackers with zero ambition and you've got a movie filled with people we don't care about. Had Apatow included a Regent "University" grad in the mix, he'd have created a perfect storm. At that point the movie would have collapsed in on itself, of course, so I applaud his discretion. Thankfully Kristen Wiig had a few minutes of screen time as our proxy, opining that she finds pregnant women disgusting.

The stoner house was apparently quite like a place Apatow shared with friends when he moved to Hollywood, but missing the work ethic. Why he thought it would be funnier to show them without jobs or ambition is beyond me. That didn't make them funnier, it made them less likable. I didn't even like Jason Segel in this movie, and that takes some doing.

Apatow's real-life wife Leslie Mann, as Alison's sister Debbie, played her usual harpy (making me understand why Apatow works so hard...who wouldn't want to avoid that shrill beyatch?). Her strained marriage to Pete, played by Paul Rudd - looking much less puffy here - was the most compelling aspect of the movie to me. Had Apatow focused on that story I'd have been happier with the end result. Then again, other than the presence of children, I could relate to that story. I fortunately can't relate to pregnancy.

My final problem with the movie was also one of its bright points. I like Seth Rogen. The wife, not so much, but I'm a fan. That said, I like him in small doses. He was great in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but there he was just part of the ensemble. He was funny in this movie, but doesn't have leading-man charisma. Swapping Rogen for Segel might have had a big positive impact for me. Marshmallow, he's got charisma.

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Take one pregnancy - with sonograms, pregnant sex, and a baby crowning - throw in a bunch of slackers, and a miscast lead and you've got a recipe for an interesting failure. I laughed and was moved a few times, but overall come away unimpressed.

I am looking forward to Apatow's final film in his family values trilogy, though. He's done sex and marriage, and now birth. Next has got to be death. Maybe he'll do that movie about Pete and Debbie and have Pete kill Debbie in the first act. Now that I'd own.