Midway through “Knocked Up,” a woman follows her husband’s car to a house where she expects to find him in bed with another woman.
Instead, she walks in on him drinking beer and talking sports with a roomful of middle-aged dads in professional baseball jerseys.
While she’s relieved he wasn’t sleeping with another woman, she’s absolutely crushed that he cheated on her with, of all things, a fantasy baseball draft.
It’s a joke that sticks in your throat and a typical example of the should-I-laugh-or-cry humor embedded throughout “Knocked Up,” an engaging, Woody-Allen-meets-Harold-Ramis sex comedy with a heart as deep as its mean streak.
Continuing in the steps of the wildly funny “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” writer/director Judd Apatow pieces together this summer’s smartest, funniest film guised as dumb stoner comedy.
Bong-in-hand and 30 pounds overweight, Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) seems destined for a life of Cheeto crumbs, skin flicks and pot smoke. He is, after all, still living off the lawsuit money awarded to him
by the British Columbia government after a postal truck ran over his foot.
Playing ensemble to Ben are pals Jayson, Jay, Jonah, Martin and Jodi (all hilarious), Ben’s roommates and fellow “fleshofthestars.com,” business partners, a still-under-construction Web site devoted to the naked flesh of Hollywood starlets.
Circumstance intervenes after an, um, prolific, one night stand with blond babe and “E!” television station anchor Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl).
Their baby soon starts baking in the oven as Alison Scott nearly barfs morning sickness all over her interviewee.
Many a disposable pregnancy test later, Ben and Alison agree to bring the child into the world. Playing foils to the newly parents-to-be are Pete (Paul Rudd) and Alison’s sister Sadie (Lesile Mann), a tortured couple trapped in an exploding relationship tied together haphazardly for the sake of the kids.
What makes it new instead of cliché is that “Knocked Up” treats its subjects with bare knuckles: feelings get obliterated and the characters do things they wouldn’t in lesser films.
Oh, and it’s filthy. Writer Judd Apatow has an ear for the way people, mid-20s-men especially, really talk, the f-bombs flying as fast as references to Back to the Future’s Doc Brown.
Sure, some might be turned off by Apatow’s realism and their heads will probably explode in the climax of the final act. Suffice it to say, “Knocked Up,” features the most subversive sight gag you’ll ever see.
The heart of the film isn’t about filth or fury, though; it’s about love and suffering. Ben and Alison are two flesh and bone human beings who don’t want to grow old just yet.
Ben (an astonishing turn by Seth Rogen) has his bongs and buddies; Alison has her looks and TV career. When a child threatens it all, they bite down and bear it, fearfully.
Apatow first staked out a name for himself in the late 1990s with his television drama “Freaks and Geeks,” an unflinching and funny look at marginalized high schoolers in a Michigan suburb.
“Knocked Up,” is proof that Apatow’s beloved freaks and geeks, lovable, quirky characters we all know — are, with regret, finally growing up.
Monthly Archive for May, 2008
“Earth Defense Force 2017″ is a dumb game featuring a bevy of scrappy graphics, repetitive sound and a ceaseless river of programming errors.
This mindless action romp would be par with the $5 Burger King games, if it were not inexplicably amazing.
Maybe it’s the return of the 17-year cicadas to Chicago, or the
armies of summer mosquitoes constantly sipping our blood, but thrashing the insects in “Earth Defense …” feels like the purest fun since the dudes from the game “Contra” started cracking alien skulls.
This ultra low budget, third person shoot’em up pits you and your
Earth Defense Force against an alien invasion dispatched from a UFO perched high above the city.
But a simple death from above does not come easy for our Earth defender, who is armed with a bevy of cannons, explosives, rifles and shotguns that can be picked up and replenished on-scene after any thorough alien massacre.
Predictably, the aliens get gnarlier and gnarlier with each impending stage. The first mission, for example, has you fighting off a swarm of monstrous ants. In successive levels, the ants can climb buildings and squirt bubbling puffs of acid from their abdomens.
Throughout the 50 stages, the ants are replaced with flying saucers and spiders and robots, each bearing fangs, guns and other villainy.
Your weapons get sweeter and sweeter as you acquire them in-game until you’re cradling the government’s most deadly homing missiles and grenade launchers on your shoulder. Fun toys like tanks, mechanical robots and combat helicopters also make themselves available throughout the game.
Some of the more devastating weapons and protective armor can only be picked up through the “inferno” difficulty level game, which is about as difficult as it sounds. However, the “normal” setting is an easy enough jaunt for video game neophytes.
It’s obvious “… Earth Defense” has some serious flaws. Developed on a spare budget, the graphics harness little of the XBox 360’s graphical power.There’s only one city to explore in all 50 missions, the voice acting is abominable and the play is seriously marred by frame rate slow-down once the alien critters start flooding the screen.
However, once they do, it’s a glorious happening. Be sure to employ
some firepower and blast those alien insects into pulpy bags of green goo.
In the year of the cicada, it’s always bug-smashing time.