Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here. Baffling. That's the first and last word that pops into my head when I contemplate Harold Ramis' biblical comedy YEAR ONE, a bizarre throwback of a movie that feels like the Mel Brooks movie that Brooks never actually got around to making. I have this deep, sure thought that Ramis had something much more intellectually complex going on when he first conceived of this movie (he's credited with the story and as co-writer with frequent "The Office" scribes Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg), perhaps something a little more dangerous, something that challenged the very existence of organized religion or questioned whether God even exits. There are shreds of that in YEAR ONE, but the guts of this film feel ripped out and replaced with fart jokes, dick jokes (foreskin jokes, to be precise) and sex jokes. Some of the joking is ridiculously funny; I probably laughed out loud a good dozen times. But most of the jokes just sit there looking for that one dude in the audience that will laugh at pretty much anything. You know who you are. I had to tough time wrapping my brain around the idea that this was the same man who gave us ANIMAL HOUSE, CADDYSHACK, STRIPES, GHOSTBUSTERS, GROUNDHOD DAY, and grossly under-appreciated THE ICE HARVEST. Even at their most base, these films had a brain and cleverness behind each gross-out joke. But YEAR ONE feels more like the kitchen-sink approach to comedy--throw as many funny people and juvenile situations at the crowd as possible and something is bound to hit. Look for cameos from nearly every member of the Judd Apatow (one of the film's producers) extended family: Paul Rudd, Bill Hader, Christopher Mintz-Plasse--hell, even Ramis himself (who was in KNOCKED UP and WALK HARD) appears as Adam, father of Cain and Abel (David Cross and Rudd, respectively). And very often, the film will make you laugh, but boy is it trying way too hard when simply a smarter draft of the script would have done the trick. Part of the problem is Jack Black as horny-caveman-turned-holy warrior Zed. Those of us who have been following Black for years have got his routine down pretty much. He's a loud talker, blurting out his lines like a small cannon, and we love him, but he works best when he tosses in a bit of actual acting. Compare his work here to what he does in TROPIC THUNDER; the difference is subtle, but it's there. Michael Sera also has a set of mannerisms that I'm beginning to get overly familiar with, but he's much funnier in YEAR ONE. I don't know whether he's getting better dialogue than Black, or if he keeps making them sound funnier. Either way, I laughed far more at his character of Zed's best buddy, the lovesick Oh. The pair travel though the Old Testament, meeting Adam and his family, the foreskin-obsessed Abraham (Hank Azaria) and his people, and visiting Sodom and Gomorrah. I could literally go scene by scene and say, "That was funny, that wasn't funny, that wasn't funny, that was funny," but the idea of evaluation bit after bit doesn't appeal to me. But weirdly enough that's how my mind is thinking of Year One, in terms of what scenes worked and which didn't. The moments with Abraham wanting to chop off every foreskin is hilarious; Kyle Gass' cameo as a eunuch (if you aren't laughing at just the idea of that, you will hate this movie); Cain attempting repeatedly to slay Abel, these are all bits that work. But most of the stuff in Sodom falls flat, even the scenes between Cera and the usually reliable Oliver Platt as the city's high priest who loves sacrificing virgins to the gods and when men rub oil on his hairy chest; none of it is that great or memorable. But there are some big ideas floating around in this film that almost get lost in the pedestrian humor. In an early scene in which Black is contemplating eating an apple from the forbidden tree of knowledge, Cera says, "It's not about fruit, it's about doing what you're told." Is he talking about the very basis of religious? Later in the film Cera ponders the notions that maybe God doesn't exist. Heavy stuff that seems slightly out of place for a film like this. The first song in YEAR ONE's closing credits is Cracker's "I See the Light," the chorus of which goes, "I see the light at the end of the tunnel now / Someone please tell me, it's not a train." It's a cautionary song about looking for enlightenment in a higher power, and it seems appropriately placed in this movie. Too bad the movie doesn't actually ponder this or any other weightier issues just a little bit more. I suppose I took away some joy at watching Black on fire for the entire movie and Cera's fruitless attempts at putting out the flames one thimbleful of water at a time. Cera's under-his-breath quips result in some of the movie's biggest laughs, but you have to plow through a lot of amateur-hour-type material to get to those moments. I'm not sure who gave up first, but I'd have to lay the blame at Ramis' feet. He's far too talented to let something like this film happen without his knowledge. My firm belief is that he thought he was going for something a bit retro and instead it became The Jack Black Show whether he wanted it to or not. That's too bad; the world is in desperate need of some truly biting satire aimed squarely at practice and pretense of religion, and YEAR ONE ain't that. -- Capone capone@aintitcoolmail.com
