Oh Baby!
Unwanted Pregnancy Is A Laughing Matter
by Jenny Peters

Judd Apatow is a comic genius. The writer-director of The Forty-Year-Old Virgin proves this with his latest laugh-filled romp, the accidental pregnancy comedy, Knocked Up.

From the moment the movie begins, we know that Ben Stone (Seth Rogan, the curly-haired goof from The Forty-Year-Old Virgin) is pretty much an idiot. He and his four goofball roommates are living a young male’s fantasy life, constantly smoking dope, playing ping-pong, and watching movies specifically to find the naked parts. Ben doesn’t even have a job, which suits him just fine.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl, of “Grey’s Anatomy” fame), an E! TV producer who lives in her married sister Debbie’s guesthouse. When Alison gets promoted to an on-air gig at the network, the two girls go out to celebrate, and that’s when the plot thickens, as she meets Ben at a nightclub and hooks up with him for a little no-strings-attached sex. Problem is, she gets knocked up from the encounter, and decides to keep the baby, despite Ben’s obvious shortcomings as a prospective husband and father.

With that as the jumping-off point of the plot, Apatow and his troupe of perfectly cast actors (including his real-life wife Leslie Mann as Debbie, and their two little girls as her onscreen kids) offer up a hilarious look at pregnancy and how it affects friendships, relationships and personal sanity.

Using a winning combination of clever dialogue and sight gags (there’s one in the delivery room that you will not believe), mixed in with just a soupçon of really insightful glimpses into what marriage really is all about, the film is a supremely satisfying laughfest that will appeal equally to both men and women.

That’s no mean feat, and part of the proof that The Forty-Year-Old Virgin was no fluke; Apatow really is a comic genius.

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