Knocked Up (2006), dir Judd Apatow, starring Seth
Rogan, Katherine Heigl

‘Knocked Up’ appears to be a gentle, charming comedy
about parenthood but is infested with all kinds of
horribleness, double standards, hypocrisy that belies
its apparent surface. Ben Stone ‘knocks up’ Alison
during a one night stand after a night’s clubbing.
Essentially the film piles up allusions, euphemisms in
order to distract away from its essential
derivativeness but also the hypocritical attitudes,
regarding sex, marriage, babies, that the film panders
to. At one point Ben is watching Steve Martin in the
film ‘Parenthood’ on one of those big monitor hotel
television sets that resemble fish tanks more than
television sets, referencing the last dire Hollywood
attempt to discourse about (something that perhaps
Hollywood needs to do more than anything) growing up.
This was one of Martin’s direst efforts but even pap
like that is at least two notches higher than ‘Knocked
Up’.

Ben and Alison have fornicated without really knowing
each other very well, if at all, and the result is
that Alison becomes pregnant (‘knocked up’). Alison
(played by Katherine Heigl), an unpleasant,
controlling person and a careerist, who is being lined
up to be a television presenter of some kind. In some
of the more unreal and ludicrous scenes in the film,
the television companies director discusses ideas
about her shows. Ben (played by Seth Rogan) is a
kinder, more rounded character, portrayed in the film
as a kind of waster, explaining to Alison how sex
doggy style has nothing to do with dogs but is really
only another sex position. Alison is utterly shocked
by the suggestion that Ben and she do it ‘doggy
style’, even though she was formerly unperturbed about
having sex on a one-night stand with a total stranger
(at the start of the film when she was ‘knocked up’).

But even though Ben is a little bit more pleasant than
Alison, it is still quite obvious that he is a
stinker. As is this film. There is one word that
sums up this turgid mass of nonsense: vomit. Another
one is puke. Alison is overcome by horror and sadness
at the prospect of bearing Ben’s sprog. Ben is too,
but he feels dutiful and responsible. The one other
option open to the couple, abortion, is never
considered, although it seems the only way forward to
a couple who are clearly unpleasant even disgraceful
people with nasty friends and family. They are
clearly incapable of raising a vegetable garden let
alone a child. The thesis of this film seems
implausible, it also seems hastily made (the sound
boom keeps on dropping down at the top of the shot).
The makers of this film are clearly dirty-minded,
smutty individualists remarkably naïve about
relationships and sex, and would clearly be better
served by going out into the world to find out
something about D.H.Lawrence or Oscar Wilde or even
just about loving relationships, than creating this
degrading rubbish and perpetrating it on our screens.


My advice to any decent punter is: stay away from this
turkey.

Paul Murphy, Ealing Empire, London