ARCHIVE
Almost Grown: Judd Apatow's Knocked Up
Like 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up is a time-tested coming-of-age story, in which familiar lessons about personal culpability and general “manning up” are delivered through novel circumstances. Both films equate their leading man shedding his bachelorhood with the passage into maturity, and both share one obvious deficiency: Their leading ladies, the capable Catherine Keener in 40-Year-Old and Heigl here, have to play roles that are a good bit closer to Responsibility Personified than to recognizable women, a problem when the riffing quiets down and the romance, so to speak, comes to the fore. I’m sure there are men who’ve fallen for responsibility first and the real-life girls that come along with it second, but I don’t think that’s supposed to be the idea in either case.
That said, Apatow provides plenty of niches for an able cast of comediennes to work in, including a terrific part for Leslie Mann as Alison’s tightly-wound sister, and bits from Charlyne Yi as a pot-loquacious hanger-outer at the boy’s hovel and SNL’s Kristen Wiig as one of Alison’s subliminally backhanded co-workers. So much of the movie’s charm rests on its population of supporting players, it sometimes feels like an entire community of second bananas. Which is not to say that all the slacker boys-behaving-badly stuff connects: I’d put the comedic BA well below the Mendoza line, and the heavy reliance on up-to-the-second cultural references, while belying a winning eagerness to plug into right now’s audience, gives the entire production a faint air of disposability (Q: How long will it take a Matisyahu reference to show its age? A: Who?). Apatow’s greatest virtue as a filmmaker is finally his casting, which helps everything fall into place: Uncommonly funny scenes come when he gives his actors range to roam, as in the relaxed moments of buddies wasting time busting fluorescent tubes on the electronics store loading dock in 40-Year-Old; or in Rogen’s give-and-take with the ever-excellent Paul Rudd at a couple’s dinner outing in Knocked Up.
Another curious feature of Apatow’s resuscitation of the Summer Sex Comedy comes in his curious distrust of titillation, or in even the faintest suggestion of sexiness. In what almost seems like a self-reflexive gag, Ben & Co.’s sole “occupation” consists of preparing the launch of a website that provides thorough information on female celebrities’ nude scenes in major studio releases, while in the film’s own — often graphically burlesque — sex scenes, Heigl keeps a forbidding brassiere conspicuously strapped on. Though this may be accountable, at least in part, to Apatow’s desire to subvert the T&A expectations of his chosen genre (or an understanding that hard-ons and laughs don’t always comfortably coexist), by limiting its “skin” to a mercilessly lit pallid male ass and a dilated vagina in mid-birth, Knocked Up achieves a certain level of sexual squeamishness. One would like to believe there’s some middle territory between outright disgust and USA Up All Night fare.
I have the luxury of quibbling because Apatow hardly lacks for defenders, and I’m as good as certain that Knocked Up will be a massive success with audiences and critics both (in one week’s time, it will be the favorite movie of chubby Jewish guys everywhere). A recent New York Times profile put the still-fresh top-of-the-world clout of this once “cult” figure in plain black-and-white: “Over the next year and a half, an Apatow-connected comedy will hit multiplexes at a rate of about one every three months.” On the whole, he deserves all the laurels he’s consistently had laid on him. He’s built up an enormously likable repertory troupe, and the homemade touch of his filmmaking — actress Mann is his real-life wife, their daughters add fine “Kids say the darndest things” supporting work and the movie concludes on the likable gesture of a “Cast scrap book” — should be an example to his industry peers. That same Times profile, noting Apatow’s fondness for keeping together his ensemble casts, also name-checks Preston Sturges. It’s a ridiculously premature comparison by any measure, but not entirely uninstructive; what separates them is the difference between Apatow, a very good collector of scenes, gags and actors, and a great director. And if Judd Apatow is going to set the gold standard for American screen comedy, it’s only natural to start expecting more.