Knocked Up

by Ken Brown

Against our better judgment, my wife and I rented Knocked Up last night. She’s been wanting to see it for a while, mainly because it’s similar to one of her favorite movies (Fools Rush In) and she likes the lead actress. Unfortunately, this story of a couple of twenty-somethings who get pregnant on a one-night stand is even more crude than we feared. It’s absolutely filled with explicit language, drug use and nudity, nearly all of which is crass and unnecessary to the plot. I would in no way recommend the film, nor do I have any desire to see it again. In all honesty, we should have just turned it off; it was that bad.

But we didn’t, and in the end, Knocked Up worked surprisingly well as social commentary. Its intended audience is the perpetually adolescent guy who looks for “Unrated” versions and would like nothing better than to spend his days smoking pot with his buddies. Yet that is precisely the kind of lifestyle the film criticizes. The lead character (Ben Stone, played by Seth Rogen) is essentially a 23-year old frat boy (minus the college education), living with four guys who spend all their time smoking and goofing off. None of them have real jobs (who knows how they afford rent, let alone weed) and their only ambition is to create a website detailing their favorite stars' nude scenes. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that their real dream would be to actually sleep with those celebrities, but the website is their only achievable ambition.

If this is the type of guy the movie is meant to attract, however, it quickly becomes apparent just how empty such a life really is. Ben is a slob, living in a pig-sty with four friends who barely even like each other. Running out of money and wasting the best years of his life, he's going nowhere and he doesn’t even realize it. When he finally meets the girl of his dreams (Alison Scott, played by Katherine Heigl), he gets so drunk he hardly remembers sleeping with her, and doesn’t realize how much he disgusts her until it’s too late. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, it’s certain she would never have gone out with him again (she only met him at all because she herself got too drunk while out celebrating a promotion).

And so the movie goes, until it finally allows Ben to hit rock bottom: nearly broke, his life is so meaningless that when an earthquake hits, the only thing he cares to save is his bong (he forgets that his pregnant girlfriend is sleeping in the next room). He doesn’t know what he’s missing until he and Alison’s brother-in-law spend a drugged-out weekend in Vegas. Sitting alone in their hotel room, they suddenly realize what a mess they’ve made of their lives. They have these smart, beautiful women who (completely improbably) love them, and yet they spend most of their time trying to get away from them.

By the time it’s over, Knocked Up is really about these two guys growing up and taking responsibility for their lives, which is a remarkably wholesome message from a movie that is anything but wholesome. I would not recommend this film to anyone (I rather wish I hadn’t watched it myself), but maybe, just maybe, it is the kind of thing that might wake up a few of the overgrown teenagers to whom it’s been marketed. For if there is anything more distressing than the characters in this movie, it’s the fact that there really are guys who live like Ben, and don't see what's wrong with it. This film is for them, and I hope it finds its mark.

(This has been cross-posted to C.Orthodoxy.)

Comments

[Jerry]

Yeah, I've heard many different things about this movie, and some of it's praises come from surprising sources. I was thinking about seeing Knocked Up just because I believe the guy who wrote it also did the tv show Freaks and Geeks, and that was a great one. It is good to hear that it does seem to have some sort of redemptive message. The fact that the movie itself is so crude is just a sign of where our culture is at right now I guess.

[Ken]

Hey Jerry,
Though I haven't seen it, I've heard the same things about the director's (Judd Apatow) previous movie, The 40 Year Old Virgin: Very crude packaging with a redeeming arc. I don't know if the message is worth the medium (so to speak), but there are people watching this kind of thing anyway, so at least Apatow is(apparently) trying to put that to good use.

[Jerry]

Yeah. I don't think that it is such a bad thing. I don't know. There are a few movies that I really do like a lot, despite the fact that I can't really recommend them on good conscience, because they do show sin and vice realistically and not at all glamorized (not that Knocked Up would necessarily be in that same catagory). I guess as we become more and more calloused by these images and stories, the harder it is to make a point. I could see that being true. Some movie that shocks my parents usually does not even faze me. But I don't think that that is a good thing.

[Ken]

I think there is a line between a story which includes vice, and one that graphically portrays it. It's one thing to imply that sin has occurred; it's another thing to show it happening with full nudity or spouting blood. The vice in Knocked Up is nothing compared to that in the Shawshank Redemption, but I would gladly recommend the latter before the former (though I probably wounldn't recommend either to a high schooler).

Then again, some movies are extremely graphic and still worth watching for other reasons (Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan come to mind). Sometimes it is necessary to see sin in its true nature, if only to counteract those who would glorify and sanitize it.