Knocked Up Review

Yesterday I went and saw Judd Apatow's "Knocked Up".

I'm not a big fan of studio comedies like this usually, but I was keenly interested in seeing this picture. Elias and I had spent a few months plotting and writing quite a bit of a Woody Allen sort of comedy screenplay that had a number of the same story beats that "Knocked Up" featured in the trailer. Young slacker has a one night stand with an upper-class working girl, pregnancy results.

As soon as we saw material come out for the movie, we shelved the idea but after watching it I think we can still carry on with our idea.

I didn't hate this film. I didn't like it all that much either.

It was over two hours long and unless you're Woody Allen, you don't really deserve to waste two hours of my time on a comedy film. And you certainly don't deserve to waste my time with your comedy if it isn't all that particularly funny.

I could count the amount of chuckles this film got out of me on one hand.

The guys who made it seem really, really cool. I think it would be cool to hang out with these guys and nerd out about movies with them, but their sense of humour just isn't the same as mine. I mean, the movie was fairly competent and it hits all the story beats in the trailer exactly as you'd expect, but it just doesn't get any deeper than that.

I think that's what's great about most Woody Allen movies is that it teaches you something about people that you didn't really know before, he's a backwards moralist. Take, for instance, Hannah and Her Sisters or Match Point, he creates these really deft characters that you think you know but then consistently pulls the rug out from under you. But in Knocked Up there are no surprises. Everything is presented as the same old cliche you would expect from this film as soon as you hear the log line.

But it wasn't a complete waste of my time.

I just feel really middle of the road about the film.

Neutral.

I felt the same way about Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It exists. I have no strong feelings about it one way or the other. I'll never need to see it again and I haven't decided if I needed to see it in the first place or not.

So.

Yeah. Knocked Up. Lukewarm. On a 1-10? My neutral feelings about it demand I give it an even 5. Right down the middle.

On a final note: This proves my point that much smaller, lower budget films can make a ton of money. You don't need to blow $200 million on a picture to have a strong summer opening weekend.