According to Rotten Tomatoes Knocked Up is the 4th highest rated film of the year (behind Once, Away From Her, and Ratatouille). Given the strong reviews and the fact It's written and directed by Judd Apatow of the 40 Year-Old Virgin I was expecting a really funny film that wasn't going to be stupid. Instead I found Knocked Up to be a funny film with some really stupid humor that took itself seriously in a good way.
Katherine Heigl plays Alison Scott, who works at E! and is promoted to an on-air position. She lives in the guest house of her sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) and her husband Pete (Paul Rudd). Pete manages bands, apparently well enough to have a guest house. Seth Rogen plays Ben Stone, a 23 year-old stoner-slacker who lives with his 4 friends building an internet site about porn. Yes they're constantly high. After an unlikely one night stand aided by alcohol (the cause of and solution to all of life's problems) Alison is [insert-title-of-movie-here]. After some advice to the contrary, Alison decides to have the baby and tells Ben and they try to see how they can get along. The film juxtaposes this with Debbie and Pete and it turns out they aren't such a happy couple either.
Sounds like a laugh-riot doesn't it? Well parts of it are. Ryan Seacrest has a hilarious cameo as himself annoyed that Jessica Simpson is late for their interview ("Maybe I'll ask her if she has an exit strategy for the middle east"). There's a mushroom induced survey of the five different kinds of chairs in a hotel room. Debbie rails into a doorman to be let into a club and he has a brilliant heartfelt response. Alison and Ben do have funny scenes and both do well in their roles. There are also plenty of examples of uncomfortable and stupid humor that I didn't think worked as well. There are also several minor characters played by Saturday Night Live actors and when I saw them I was taken out of the movie. Particularly when Kristen Wiig was essentially playing one of her SNL characters.
Knocked Up manages to have pretty realistic conversations but unrealistic characters. Alison seems to have no friends or interests. Ben has no grasp on reality. Everything gets better when Ben grows up, Alison had to change nothing. Pete and Debbie are both scared about growing up but she wants to appear young and he wants to act it.
Dramedy is combination of drama and comedy, usually emphasizing drama. Knocked Up tries to be the reverse, emphasizing comedy. I don't think "Comama" works as word, and I'm not sure it works well as a movie either. The 40 Year-Old Virgin was a (sometimes stupid) comedy with a heart that worked. Knocked Up tries to make that heart a little deeper. The comedy that's deeper works well with that (sometimes very much so), but when it adds in the stupid factor it stretches the framework perhaps a bit too far. Knocked Up is fun and worth seeing, but that binary rating shows a flaw in Rotten Tomatoes system. 91% might agree it's worth seeing, but it's not in the 91st percentile of comedies.
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