The Conical Glass: A good rom com is hard to find

Monday, June 04, 2007

A good rom com is hard to find

Romantic comedy is a tough genre to do well -- it's easy to make them too sappy or predictable or cutesy. Still, I admit a certain fondness for them, and I'm glad that at least one filmmaker seems to be committed to doing them right. That person is writer/director Judd Apatow, whose first feature was the thoroughly delightful "The 40 Year-Old Virgin"; happily, his follow-up to that hit, "Knocked Up," is just as good, if not better.

"Knocked Up" stars Katherine Heigl as Alison, a willowy blonde employee of the E! cable channel. She's so excited when she gets a promotion that takes her from behind the scenes to on-air talent that she celebrates by going out clubbing with her married sister (Leslie Mann), and after a few too many drinks, she has a one-night stand with Ben, a chubby, unemployed slacker (Seth Rogen). When she awakens the next morning and sees Ben's pasty white rear end in her bed, she's not thrilled, but Alison is a nice person and invites Ben to breakfast. They don't exactly have much in common, and that seems to be that -- until two months later, when Alison discovers she's pregnant. The only guy who could possibly be the father is Ben. Despite that fact, Alison decides to keep the baby, and give Ben a second chance.

The reason "Knocked Up" works is because even though Ben's kind of a loser -- he lives with a bunch of guy friends, and when they're not smoking pot or playing ping pong, they're putting together a web site that indexes female celebrities' nude scenes in movies -- he's really a good guy, funny and sweet and well-meaning. Alison may be out of Ben's league looks-wise, but I suspect most women who see the film will be charmed by him. The relationship between Ben and Alison's brother-in-law Pete (Paul Rudd) is also a lot of fun, especially a scene where the two, desperate to take a break from the womenfolk (and, in Pete's case, his two kids), escape to Vegas, take hallucinogenic mushrooms, and go see Cirque du Soleil.

Sex, drugs and Cirque du Soleil -- this is a defiantly R-rated, adult comedy. But despite all the raunchy bits, what really sticks with you is the movie's great big heart.

"Knocked Up" is 2 hours long and David Mamet's "The Cryptogram," currently being produced by Shotgun Players, is barely 75 minutes, but it seems far longer. I'm usually a big fan of Mamet, but "The Cryptogram" is not, in my opinion, one of his better plays. It's about a young boy, John, who is having trouble sleeping, and the late-night interactions he has with his mother, Donny, and a family friend, Del. At first, the boy is waiting for his father to get home. Then we learn that the father isn't coming home -- he's left Donny. Or maybe he left because John is such an irritating chatterbox. I honestly think the child actor who plays John, Gideon Lazarus, does an excellent job; it's just that the character is annoying as all get-out. The gentleman sitting next to me in the theater was actually whispering under his breath, "Go to bed, go to bed, go to bed," at a couple points when John is onstage; as soon as the lights went down at the end of the show, he sprang from his chair, as if he couldn't get out of there fast enough. God help Ben and Alison if their child turns out to be anything like John.

posted by 125records @ 10:06 AM

4 Comments:

At 11:18 AM, Josh said…

You may have already seen these two trailers, but Wendy McClure has a funny analysis about how bad most romantic comedies are.
At 4:08 PM, 125records said…

Thank goodness, neither of those were played before "Knocked Up" -- though we did see the painfully awful trailer for "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry." Homophobia = laughs!
At 6:40 PM, yellojkt said…

I have to talk my wife into this movie. I am a huge Judd Apatow fan.
At 9:55 PM, 125records said…

yellojkt: This is the ultimate couples movie! It's got everything women want in a chick flick, PLUS enough goofy humor to hook the guys. Apatow's a genius.