You can’t help but think of Kevin Smith’s lesser works while watching Judd Apatow’s male rom-com. Knocked Up, fresh off the frat-pack conveyer belt, is all very zeitgeist, stuffed with pop-culture riffs and funny juvenilia. The plot and set pieces are familiar old warhorses. Likeable loser guy (Rogen) meets smart uptown girl (Heigl). Guy has one-night-stand with girl. Girl gets pregnant. The two are forced to make a go of it. They break up. They get back together. And so on.
And sure, Judd Apatow, the incredibly talented writer behind Forty Year Old Virgin and The Larry Sanders Show, can trot out casually homophobic jokes that might even bring a smile to Peter Tatchell’s face. An ace chronicler of stoner speech and guy stuff, Mr. Apatow has fashioned a non-stop rowdy stag party of a movie.
Sadly, when it attempts drama or – heaven help us – female characterisation, Knocked Up is rather less successful. Some commentators have taken issue with the film’s strident pro-life agenda – but we could let that go as a dramatic device if only the film was a little less boyish. Boyish in this context means that it’s a White Man’s Man’s Man’s World. It implies that all women are killjoys and all creatures gifted with dicks just want to cut loose and make motorboat noises between some lap-dancer’s breasts. Boyish means that girls are pretty, responsible baby-makers who act as civilising agents. As I recall it, My Darling Clementine had a more rounded view of femininity.
As the US catches up with the plague of laddishness that defined our ailing culture during the late ‘90s, there can only be more Knocked Up knock-offs on the way. Drat. This isn’t a battle of the sexes. This is the mother of all wars.