Sowing The Seeds Of Love

I have to admit it took me ages to see The 40 Year Old Virgin, only lately, and only partly on cable at that.  And I have to say I was fully impressed - Steve Carrell gives an amazing, naturalistic performance and the story, which I expected to be a Farrelly Brothers/Will Ferrell type over-the-top thing, was actually surprisingly subtle and low key, and the humor unexpectedly warm.

Knocked Up pretty much takes director Judd Apatow's proven strengths, applies them to unintended pregnancy and delivers... not just a baby, but easily one of the best comedies this year, one that may well be on the "best comedies" list for a long time.  That's not to say it doesn't have its flaws, or that critics aren't overstating its fine qualities.  It's worth keeping in mind that for all its great modern moments, Knocked Up is basically a traditional "woman's picture" about the value of love and commitment, whose smartest virtue may well be rethinking an old tale from a man's point of view.

In fact, one could make a similar case about Virgin - where Carrell plays a fairly feminized, softer man who just wants to find a warm, caring relationship before he gets sexual. That's a "good girl" scenario that's as old as the hills, really, just with a man at the center.  Apatow may be a genius in this regard: he's giving men room to explore their more romantic side, while taking a lot of the pressure off female characters to offer simplistic "virgin/whore" choices. When men can be softer, it's easy to provide more complex women beside them.

Apatow essentially reverses Virgin's main dilemma - rather than no sex, we are confronted by a rapid fire series of events that get Alison (Katherine Heigl, luminous of course) and Ben (Seth Rogen - an Apatow favorite who has his big chance here) into bed.  Sex first, questions later - as Alison, a young professional just getting her big break at E! (ha ha), discovers that Ben is a layabout stoner with no real sense of direction (just an idea for a website about... naked movie stars.  Triple ha).

Neither one though, is fully grown up - Alison lives in her sister's guest house, with sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) and husband Pete (Paul Rudd) as her examples of young parenthood. And nether Debbie nor Alison's mom is quite supportive of Alison once she finds out she's pregnant and wants to go through with it (abortion, of course, barely comes into this discussion).

Ben too, has to grow up and come to terms with his responsibility as a father, and to explore the possibility for a relationship with a beautiful woman he never dreamed he'd have an opportunity with.  Wish fulfillment for guys? Perhaps. But Apatow's strength here is making these characters into real characters - Alison has edges and complexities, and Ben's cuter than he might seem at first blush... smarter and nicer, too. As much as anything this is about two people discovering that sex is the least of their connection - they like to talk, to banter and challenge each other.

As usual, Apatow's larded his flm with so many interesting characters and bits of business, some things just don't get explored enough - I wanted more of Alison's tag team supervisors, the man who backs her up and the woman who says passive aggressive things in this fantastic quiet, bitchy way (it's The Devil Wears Ann Taylor), as well as more about the obstetrician(s) who treat them along the way.  This is smart, funny stuff in nearly every scene, and proves that the current "smart comedy" moment probably completely belongs to Apatow, the potential Frank Capra for his generation (something Aaron Sorkin might want to explore since going from Sports Night - which Apatow made me think of - to the horrendous Studio 60 seems like the wrong path).

But let's not get too bombastic here.  Knocked Up is a fantasy, a traditional romantic comedy dressed up in a "daring premise" that's really just window dressing for the usual "meet cute, overcome the obstacles, wind up happy and together at the end" story we usually get from these things.  In real life, one night stands don't usually become romances, the guy who knocked you up usually walks away, and real women often get abortions.  Not to mention that in the real world, bickering, unhappy relationships like Debbie and Pete don't usually last, even for the kids. It's a credit to the top notch performers here - Heigl and Rogen have the roles of their careers, while Mann and Rudd make marvelous foils - that they make this material seem fresh,  appealing, and real. Apatow, brilliantly, spins America's romantic expectations back at us by telling us, secretly, that guys look for the romance too.  And they do.  They just, like women, don't usually find it.  And if the worst thing to say about Knocked Up is that it believes in a love most of us may never find, well, that's hardly the worst thing, now, is it?