My Favorite Movies: Knocked Up

It's finally time for another installment in my Favorite Movies series. As I mentioned in my introductory look back, I'm not following a rigid schedule or order with these. It's pretty much whenever I watch a movie from my most current Top 100 movies list*, especially if there's no Reaction already written for it, I'll write a little piece explaining why it's one of my favorite films. Even more so than my Reactions, these aren't intended as reviews. The idea is to put into words why I like the films. Knocked Up is one of the simplest films of my favorite films to explain. No movie explains the appeal of Judd Apatow better. 

*The last time I updated the list was July 2016. I imagine and update will be coming soon. I have a couple hundred new movies to consider, after all.
 

Judd Apatow is the super-producer/writer/director who is most associated with the shift in comedy movies that happened around 2005 with his debut feature as a director, The 40 Year Old Virgin. That is an oversimplification in every way, of course. Apatow's brand of comedies evolved from the Frat Pack comedies, using Will Ferrell as a bridge, and those movies were influenced by Farrelly brothers comedies of the 90s and so on and so forth. Apatow had already been around for a while  before he started directing. He cut his teeth on TV as a writer for The Larry Sanders Show and writer/creator of Freaks and Geeks. He produced those as well as films like Heavy Weights, The Cable Guy, and Anchorman. The 40 Year Old Virgin was his big break because he directed it and it was an immediate hit, unlike those other projects, which took time to be discovered. Pretty soon, his highly improvisational, casually paced comedies became the standard for mainstream comedies. He didn't invent any of this and other people were doing similar things at the same time and before. The same summer that The 40 Year Old Virgin made $109 million in the box office Wedding Crashers made $209 million doing similar things. For whatever the reason, Apatow's name stuck.
 
Knocked Up is Apatow's sophomore feature and it's a key moment for him. The 40 Year Old Virgin wasn't entirely Judd Apatow's. Steve Carell took some ownership of that, enough to rightfully earn a "written by" credit. While, the cast had a lot of familiar Apatow collaborators, most of them were snuck in. It felt like Apatow's tryout with the studio. A very funny tryout. Knocked Up is all Apatow's. He gave Seth Rogen the lead role. We forget this after a decade of Rogen being everywhere, but that was a risk. Before that movie, he was known for a couple small parts in other Apatow movies and shows (never as the star). Otherwise, he was a writer for Da Ali G Show, had a small part in Donnie Darko, and had a couple other TV credits. Even those Apatow projects, Cal in The 40 Year Old Virgin and Ken in Freaks and Geeks are not career-making roles. And it's not just Rogen. Virtually the entire Knocked Up cast is made up of "Apatow's guys". Martin Starr was pulled from Freaks and Geeks. Jay Baruchel was from Undeclared. Jason Segel was in both. Paul Rudd came from 40 Year Old Virgin. Jonah Hill, I think was just friends with those guys and stuck around. I don't want to call Paul Rudd's Pete a stand-in for Judd Apatow himself, but his wife and daughter in the movie are played by Apatow's wife (Leslie Mann) and daughters (Maude and Iris). Apatow even used Knocked Up for recruiting. Kristen Wiig's small role in Knocked Up directly led to Bridesmaids getting made. In fact, I think Katherine Heigl is the only person in the central cast without a connection to Apatow, and that's partly because she was a replacement for Anne Hathaway*. Had 40 Year Old Virgin been a failure, it could've been blamed on a number of people. If Knocked Up failed, it was squarely on Apatow.
 
*Hathaway also doesn't have an Apatow connection. She would've been great in the role, in my opinion. I believe she dropped out because she didn't approve of the idea of showing a woman crowning during labor.
 

So, I'm a fan of this brand of comedy. Apatow isn't very precious with his writing and would rather include the funniest take than the one that uses his line*. Considering he fills his cast with a bunch of writers and improv guys, many of whom know each other well and are comfortable around each other, it's no surprise that so many of the jokes land. It's this focus on being as funny as possible that I respond to. It's controlled chaos.
 
*There's a major misunderstanding about improvising lines. Just because the line that is used in the final cut isn't what's in the screenplay originally doesn't mean the screenplay is bad or isn't funny. The screenplay is funny and gives guidance. It sets a tone. It lets the actor know what kind of beat the scene needs. The important part is that this character is telling a joke in this manner at this moment. I think back to the gag reel for Knocked Up. There's the scene with Ken Jeoung as the doctor saying "If you want to have a good time..." then he says a joke. The key is the contrast of his seriousness and the funny example he gives. The exact is example is whatever sounds funniest, but the context of the scene is the value of the screenplay. Sorry, for the side rant.
 
Apatow's films aren't for everyone. I get that. This film is very male-dominated and the couple females of significance, Alison (Katherine Heigl) and Debbie (Leslie Mann), seem to exist only to swoop in and kill everyone's good time. If you see it like that, I can understand how it would turn you off. Here's my defense of that. Leslie Mann is Apatow's wife and returned for This Is 40 playing the same character. I'm sure if she had a problem with the portrayal of the character, changes would've been made. Heigl is a little trickier. First of all, I don't find her character any less likable than Rogen's (perhaps less lovable, if you want to make that distinction). A major point in the movie is that men like Rogen and Rudd force the women to look like the bad guys. Heigl's  role is to play the "adult" in the central relationship: the one who has her shit together. The point of the movie isn't for Alison and Ben to find a true middle ground where their relationship can work. She's mostly there. Maybe she needs to lighten up a little bit. He has to tear down and rebuild everything about his life to get caught up to her. The movie is judging his lifestyle pretty harshly despite acknowledging that parts of it are pretty fun. The full arc of Allison's story is to loosen up a little bit, which is harder to make endearing on screen. Some of the issue is Katherine Heigl too. Heigl is a fine actress - the only Emmy winner in the film, I believe - but she doesn't quite fit in this film. She's a square peg in a round hole. She the one outsider in the cast and it shows. All that said, she's pretty good. She plays Alison well and fleshes her out. Apatow isn't sure what to do with her. You can debate about if Heigl was forced into a role like this one by lazying casting agents of or if it's something about her as a performer. My opinions is that she's been playing characters a certain way for so long with enough agency over which jobs she takes that I have to believe that a lot of it is her, not lazy casting. Regardless, the female parts aren't the greatest strength of the film.
 

I've lost the thread of my original point somewhere. I've gone on long enough though. This is a very funny movie. It's the best balance Judd Apatow has found so far of jokes and story. The film made a star out of Seth Rogen which has strongly impacted my favorite movie list over the last decade. The ensemble is as deep as you will find in a comedy movie. It's not the most disciplined screenplay, which doesn't bother me as much as it does in other films, because the time wasted is often for a joke I like. This is also in the category of one of those movies that's so damn easy to watch.