Knocked Up
Knocked Up
Score: 8/10
I’d read all the reviews going into it. Almost every one said “there’s no way Judd Apatow could it again, after one successful project after another. He’s got to have a dud one of these times right?” Then, they all go on to say that, not only was Knocked Up not a dud, but it surpassed all their expectations. Well, my thinking going into this was that Apatow makes good comedies one after another and knows what he’s doing. Why should this be any different? His gross, immature humor usually doesn’t appeal to the mainstream critics, so obviously they’re going to be surprised by how much they laughed at both 40 Year Old Virgin and now this one, but these comedies are geared towards my age group, so I feel no shame in liking them at all.
So how is Knocked Up? It’s not quite as funny as 40 Year Old Virgin, but it feels a lot more real. It tackles the bad parts of relationships with the fights and hardships. It tackles the lonliness everyone’s felt a some point in their life, and it tackles the unexpected things that happen to us in life and how we deal with them. This is like the anti-hollywood love story where the lead is a chubby low-life whose drunken one-night stand with a beautiful girl forces her to get to know a guy she probably wouldn’t give a second look if she were sober. And the rest is them working it out as the crazy characters around them, their friends and family, provide more than enough trouble on top of what they already have.
Reading the paragraph I just wrote probably makes you wonder how in the world it’s up to par with Apatow’s other stuff. That doesn’t sound funny at all, right? Well, the underlying messages in the movie are what separates it from his other comedies, but the comedic genius of Apatow is still there in full. The lead’s friends are stoners like him and provide plenty of hilarious moments, and the bickering married couple that is the other lead’s sister and her husband are just as funny, but in a much sadder way.
Overall, I loved this movie as I thought I would. I laughed most the way through and was surprised at how real it felt. I even wondered at times if the movie would even have a happy ending. Real life love is much more complicated than hollywood likes to admit, and it’s movies like this that we can relate to. Add to this the fact that it’s really funny and you’ve got a great movie on your hands. Bravo Judd Apatow!
