Knocked Up -- Young, Funny, and Smart

Knocked Up, the raunchy and knee-slappingly funny comedy from the director of The Forty-Year-OldVirgin, may not only catapult the careers of its stars Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl, but it may be one of the few times that a summer film so blatantly targeted to 18 to 30-year-olds has more to say than three-quarters of the year's adult-oriented films. The film premiered to cheers at major film festivals earlier in the spring before it opened in wide release three weeks ago amid speculation that the film would be the one of the biggest hits of the summer.

Rogen stars as Ben Stone, a woeful, unemployed slacker who spends time working with his blow-pipe-smoking, sex-starved, and very funny friends developing a web site with the dubious distinction of promoting scenes in films in which leading actresses appear naked. One night at a hip club a nervous Ben meets Allison, an upwardly mobile production assistant who has just been promoted to an on-air spot on an E-like cable channel. The two dance and go back to Allison's apartment and have sex. The morning after, though, Allison, wakes up and sees a naked Ben lying on her living room couch and nearly cringes. Allison's eyes reveal her disgust and her own disappointment in her split-second decision to have sex with the man she met only one night earlier. Allison reluctantly invites Ben to have her breakfast with her sister and her husband. Several weeks go by without the two contacting each other, and then Allison has a bout of morning sickness on the set of her television show before she learns she is pregnant.

Allison thinks about her options, decides she wants to have the baby, and then calls an emotionally-loaded Ben, who ultimately agrees to help her in whatever way he can. In addition to exploring how Ben and Allison's relationship evolves, the film takes its time developing the characters of Debbie and Pete, Allison's older sister and her husband. The thirty-something husband and wife are nicely played by Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann. Although Debbie and Pete give advice to Ben and Allison throughout the film, they too have their problems, and the film displays a wonderful balance between humor and wisdom in the way in which it presents their marriage and the all-too-real issues the couple faces. And in a smart bit of casting, Joanna Kerns and Harold Ramis portray Allison's mother and Ben's father, respectively.

Knocked Up arrived in U.S. theaters just in time. Despite decent box office receipts, the quality of this summer's films is mediocre at best, and few films with the exception of Disturbia have guaranteed future stardom for their leading actors. The film's success is due in large part to word-of-mouth and the winning performances by Rogen and Heigl. Rogen is a younger, less exposed cross between Will Ferrell and Chevy Chase. He brings the right blend of innocence, physical humor, and charm to Ben, who must balance his day-long head trips with his uninspired friends with his desire to develop the maturity that Allison's pregnancy demands. Heigl, looking a bit fresher than she does in ABC's hit television show, Grey's Anatomy, is perfect. Her eyes and face give Allison the confidence she needs to make the decisions she does and the patience she knows her often-pathetic mate requires.

Although it has almost all of the trappings of a conventional profanity-riddled and sex-laden comedy for older teenagers and young adults, Knocked Up is uncommonly intelligent. Lesser movies in this genre would have contained fewer laughs and far less insights and would not have asked many of the questions posed by this film. The film prompts us to think carefully about how well we know the people we sleep with, the consequences of our decisions involving sex and relationships, ourselves as individuals in the context of relationships and marriage, the different rates at which some of us respond to the opportunities that love presents, and the importance of compromise and sacrifice in our most meaningful relationships.

Writer and director Judd Apatow is a real find. With The Forty-Year-Old Virgin and now Knocked Up, he has displayed an uncanny knack for making us laugh at the most personal and most human of life situations while shedding enough light to keep audiences talking, chuckling, and learning that with the love of family and friends, none of this previously taboo material is worth getting tied up in a knot over.

Grade: B+