I always loved Knocked Up. I don’t watch it very often (this is the first time I’ve revisited it since probably 2009), but it has a soft spot in my heart. It’s weird looking back on this movie from 2007 and remembering that Seth Rogen hadn’t really been in movies before. Yes, he had a supporting role in The 40 Year Old Virgin, but his screen time in that movie is probably equivalent to what Martin Starr gets in this movie. Rogen really owes a lot to this movie (as well as Superbad which came out a month later, but we aren’t here to talk about that). This is the movie that put him on the escalator to stardom.
Knocked Up had a pretty famously… complicated publicity tour when it was coming out. Katherine Heigl, who also owed this movie almost as much as Rogen did, famously… criticized (?) it for portraying men as lovable slobs and women as “shrews” because they actually took life and the responsibilities that come with it seriously. This was unfortunately one of the first reasons she was later stamped with the most damning of all Hollywood labels: DIFFICULT TO WORK WITH. This movie did launch her into stardom, much like it did Rogen, but she had that stamp on her forever after that and she couldn’t seem to scrub it off until she virtually ceased to exist in Hollywood. It’s a shame: she’s really good in Knocked Up! This movie doesn’t work without her; she is the solid spine that everyone else gets to swing around.
I found her remarks interesting on my latest re-watch. Is that true? Is this movie a little harsh on women and a little too easy on the guys?
The answer is: yes. It’s not a resounding “yes,” but there is validity to what she said. The most on-the-nose example is the scene about midway through the movie where Pete (Paul Rudd) is cautiously apathetic to the reality that there are multiple sex offenders in his neighborhood where he lives with his wife, Debbie (Leslie Mann) and his children.
Debbie: So I’m the bad guy because I’m trying to keep our children safe from child molesters and mercury and you’re cool ‘cause you don’t give a shit?
Pete: Yeah.
Debbie: Yeah? Is that it?
Pete: Pretty much.
Debbie: God you’re an asshole.
Now that scenario is never really explored again and that’s why it seems unfair to the female character… because she’s 100% right: Pete is an asshole. There is no moment where Pete has to roll back and admit he’s wrong and should have taken it more seriously. On the other hand, and I don’t know this to be true, I would bet my girlfriend would find that scene incredibly cathartic on its own, because it sheds light on how goddamn frustrating men are. And I think that may be the core dispute with this movie, more so than many others: your gender can have a gigantic effect on how you perceive character motivations.
The real question I have about this movie and its motivation is this: how are we supposed to feel about Ben (Seth Rogen)? Are we supposed to feel anything at all or just see how things play out for him? As Heigl noted, he is lovably oafish in this movie, so do we want him to stay that way and for Alison (Heigl) to lighten up or do we want him to rise to the occasion and become the responsible parent he needs to be? If they want you to feel the latter, then they really make you hold out for it because his growth to maturity happens in a 2-minute montage right before the end of the movie.
I think Knocked Up wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants you to relish in all the dopey shenanigans the male characters enjoy for about 100 minutes and then asks you to grow up and see that the men were immature and the women were right all along in the last few minutes of the movie. So I can see why Apatow would argue that it is a pro-female movie but because the bulk of it lingers on a “boys will be boys” sentiment, Heigl has a fair point in saying it feels unfair to women.
Independent of all that, the movie is still hilarious and is easily the best rom-com in recent memory (sorry, Forgetting Sarah Marshall).
When you watch it, you start to realize that the camera hardly moves, and obviously there’s reason for that: with the actors improvising so much, it would be hard to edit the best comedy together if the shots kept changing so the motion is pretty static but it doesn’t matter; it is more than worth the comedy we get.
Leslie Mann and Seth Rogen have never been funnier than they are in this movie (Paul Rudd is great too but he’s still best in Anchorman). Katherine Heigl is not just charming but also quite funny too.
Alison: I do NOT want you to fuck me like a dog.
Ben: It’s not like a dog… it’s doggy-style.
At the end of the day, this movie is insanely charming. It has some issues but it is well intentioned. Keep in mind, it also features Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader and Alan Tudyk. This is one of those movies that could only exist in the year it was created; if it was made now, everyone would be way too expensive (except, unfortunately for Heigl). Be thankful that we have Knocked Up, warts and all.
Movie Musings 