Pregnant pause

Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) and Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) contemplate unexpected parenthood in Knocked Up. (Suzanne Hanover/Universal Studios)

In the dating jungle, Ben, played by unlikely leading man Seth Rogen, is part panda (cute, waddly), part sloth (content to hang). At 23, he’s building a celebrity porn site and living in a Los Angeles bungalow with a caravan of stoner buddies who share a basement-dweller skin pallor best described as “greyge.” Days are spent revelling in the gurgling of bongs and debating how to clean pubic hair from the toilet. But these are not frat boys; they’re smart pop culture geeks with no outlets except each other. The motor mouths on this crew never stop zipping between high-low references; in two breaths, they hit Back to the Future, Iraq, Cat Stevens and being Jewish. (“I love your curly hair. Do you use product?” “It’s called Jew.”) The guys aren’t really jerky or sexist — they’re just underutilized.

Knocked Up is the story of what happens when Ben accidentally impregnates Alison (Katherine Heigl), a gorgeous, improbable one-night stand. How to fit this earnest situation into a life of levity and munchies? The tortured — but imperative — maturation of the modern male seems to be the latest trend in comedy, now that vomiting and pie-sex are played out, and films along this theme often bear the imprint of writer-director Judd Apatow. Apatow, the 39-year-old, anxious hero of comedy freaks in the know, directed The 40-Year-Old Virgin, produced Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights, and on television, made the brutally honest (ergo quickly cancelled) loser celebrations Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared.

With Knocked Up, Apatow goes for something roomier and more ambitious than before; it’s 130 minutes (110 would have been better), and the stories fan out from Alison and Ben to include a meditation on a lived-in marriage, the vicissitudes of male friendship, how no one wants to get old anymore and fathers and sons (with Harold Ramis, perfectly cast, as Ben’s wise dad). It’s also unbelievably dense with jokes. They spin so fast and funny that you’ll miss a few through the laughter; watch for Kristen Wiig’s brilliant phrasing as the world’s most passive-aggressive colleague, and a string of hilariously callous OBGYNs. I’m usually as good at predicting box office as I am at predicting fashion trends — come on, people: lederhosen! Don’t leave me hanging! — but my crystal ball tells me that this rat-a-tat pace will guarantee Knocked Up huge success: You need to see it twice to make sure you didn’t miss anything. I would, and as the gentlemen stoners might say, I’m, like, a chick.

Lewdness aside, Knocked Up is a relationship film, one that dares to suggest that people get together — and work hard to stay together — for reasons other than the pleasure of mirrored genetic perfection (see: The Holiday, Catch and Release). Running alongside the slacker transformation that’s the crux of the film is a parallel story about Alison’s sister, Debbie (Leslie Mann), and her husband, Pete (Paul Rudd). Theirs is a simmering Bergmanesque portrait of a marriage, one that swaps barely furnished Swedish farmhouses for California sunlight and a McMansion. “Marriage is like a really unfunny version of Everybody Loves Raymond,” says Pete. “Except instead of lasting 22 minutes, it lasts forever.” Pete’s present is what Ben fears for his future: a workaholic with two little girls and a wife who nags him with where-you-going-how-was-your-day? interrogations every time he hits the garage door opener.

Ben (Seth Rogen, far right) hangs out with his slacker friends, from left, Jodi (Charlyne Yi), Martin (Martin Starr) and Jonah (Jonah Hill). (Suzanne Hanover/Universal Studios)

But Apatow is the master of tucking the conventional setup under his arm and sprinting past the expected punchline. Turns out that Pete isn’t just a henpecked Al Bundy, but a husband and father who’s sometimes selfish and absent. “Just because you don’t yell doesn’t mean you’re not mean,” says Debbie in a true, raw confrontation after she discovers that what she thought was her husband having an affair is something totally different, equally hurtful and funnier. At the same time, Debbie figures out that within marriage, her husband’s retreat to a man cave of his own is a necessity; their meeting somewhere in the middle is the lesson observed by Alison and Ben, chewing their fingernails on the sidelines.

Mann, in a breakout performance, punches her way out of the box o’ shrew she’s initially shoved inside. Delivering her lines in a cartoon squeak, she’s a comedian with Catherine O’Hara-level timing, and O’Hara’s gift for injecting vulnerability into shrillness. She also happens to be Apatow’s wife and the mother of his daughters (who play her daughters in the film). I don’t know what kind of pillow talk went on during the making of this film, but Knocked Up shows an astute understanding of aging women, and the erosion of one’s sense of self that comes with motherhood. On a night out on the town, 30-something mom Debbie discovers she’s no longer babe enough (by idiot standards) to bypass the queue at a nightclub. Her confrontation with her own waning hotness manifests itself in a confrontation with a 250-pound African-American bouncer; he turns out to be something entirely unexpected, and she realizes that her currency is changing, and maybe that’s OK.

Yes, Knocked Up is raunchy; there is already much internet twittering over a few shots of a baby actually crowning (somehow they found a waxed, bloodless pregnant porn star to act as a body double). But mostly, the film runs on kindness and a sincere belief that its characters must strive to be better because they deserve better. A strain of family values conservatism prevents any address of the actual challenges of single parenthood, or early on, the possibility of (shhh) abortion. Such real-world complications don’t fit in the Apatow vision; standing on the opposite side of the comedy divide from Sacha Baron Cohen, he’s not very hard on the world, happily forgiving ego-bloated anchormen and weirdo middle-aged virgins. How sweet is Knocked Up? It doesn’t even go for the jugular when Ryan Seacrest makes a cameo.

But Apatow is undone by his sweetness with the character of Alison, a leading lady whose niceness saps her of personality; she just doesn't reverberate like Mann's second banana. Alison is the rare pregnant woman who seems to take up less space the further along she gets. Why she sticks it out, and what she longs for, are skirted and ignored questions. Part of Alison’s vagueness is the usual fact that — with the exception of Mann — women always get the underwritten roles in comedies. But also, Heigl is up against Rogen, who has a warmth in his wounded glance that makes her upright Barbie doll manner seem less than human. As Ben says, Alison is “prettier” than he is, but he’s the one you can’t take your eyes off.

Knocked Up opens across Canada on June 1.

Katrina Onstad writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.