Two can be as bad as One
In the beginning there was Black, Cera and a plague of bad comedy
By Alex Field 06/25/2009
Year One
Directed by Harold Ramis
Starring: Jack Black, Michael Cera, Oliver Platt, David Cross, Paul Rudd.
Rated PG-13 for violence,
suggestive language
and sexual content.
1 hr. 40 min.
Can manic comedian and slapstick-ician Jack Black bring his High-Fidelity credibility back to the screen? Does the dorky dry-humor hipster Michael Cera wield some of his Juno credentials to save the script? The answer is no, though there are a handful of funny scenes in Year One, enough to cut a movie trailer at least, and most due to the presence of Black and Cera. The rest of the jokes play as wooden, tasteless, goofy or groan-inducing ridiculousness, though sometimes, admittedly, that’s a welcome recipe.
The film begins in some kind of Paleolithic first year, a time when cavemen rule the forest, as played by Jack Black’s Zed, a spear-throwing hunter with bad aim, and Michael Cera’s strawberry-picking gatherer, called Oh.
Once veteran comedy actor/writer/director Harold Ramis (Caddyshack, Groundhog Day) establishes these roles, Year One steps through a time-traveling portal somewhere along the way (though apparently not onscreen), and Zed and Oh begin to move through a dizzying series of forced one-joke meetings with historical characters and places.
In the opening, the two prehistoric tribesmen buddies stumble into a tree growing glowing apples, which turn out to be the forbidden fruit of the Old Testament’s tree of knowledge of good and evil.
After a “knowledgy” bite from one of the apples, Zed starts to believe that he’s been “chosen by God,” and in the next scene he starts to fire off questions, saying, “Everything is weird,” and asking himself goofy existential questions like “Why am I even talking right now?”
That one knowledgy bite gets Zed and Oh kicked out of their village and sends the two pinwheeling off into other lands, and times.
After a meeting with Cain and Abel, in which the obvious occurs and Cain beats the hell out of Abel’s face two, three, no, four times, somehow Zed and Oh find themselves complicit in Cain’s crime and they run. They stumble across Abraham readying to slay his son Isaac. Zed and Oh prevent the act from happening and travel with a grateful Isaac back to their Hebrew camp. Abraham begins to circumcise every man in camp, which sends Zed and Oh merrily on their way.
Instead of Black taking on this “chosen one” mantle and moving the movie forward with some sense of purpose, the two idiots wander simplistically from one badly written setup into another, and the movie sputters into the city of Sodom, where the climax of the film takes place.
To be fair, two female love interests figure centrally into the story, giving Zed and Oh reason to attempt a rescue at the end of the film, but it doesn’t really matter by that point. Year One is on borrowed time.
The comic supporting cast is filled out by veteran laugh-getters, with Oliver Platt playing the high priest of Sodom in a silly turn, Hank Azaria playing Abraham with one of his trademark lispy voices, David Cross as the jerk Cain and Paul Rudd as his self-righteous brother, Abel. Despite the presence of these veterans and production credits given to comedy king Judd Apatow, the story cannot rise from its own knuckle-dragging.
One wonders, watching Black and Cera onscreen, if the two usually hilarious actors can carry a film on their own. Black works well onscreen as the comedic seasoning in otherwise serious movies, and Cera plays better as the goofy but charming dork.
Together, Black and Cera don’t bring enough vitality to the screen to overcome the faulty premise.
So I end with a prayer: Please let there be no Year Two!
Alex Field is an aggressive film lover who watches movies not quite daily. His book The Hollywood Project was published in 2004. By day, he is a book editor; by night he blogs at alexanderfield.blogspot.com.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT