Bovie Movie

Steve Carell’s show-stopping turn in the 2003 Jim Carrey vehicle Bruce Almighty was the spark of creation for this biblically themed comedy. Carell here reprises his role as vain newscaster Evan Baxter, who has only just been elected to Congress when he’s visited by God (Morgan Freeman) and instructed to build an ark. Carell’s everyman quality and impeccable comic timing serve him well as he struggles to convince the world that the end is nigh, although there’s nothing here as riotously funny as that one “nervous breakdown” scene in the first film. Director Tom Shadyac struggles with a thin premise, and there are some uninspired running jokes, such as the miracle of the eternally growing beard — a gag that does indeed seem to drag on forever. Wanda Sykes has all the best lines as Baxter’s sassy assistant, but it’s Carell’s geeky charm and a bagful of CGI tricks that just about keep this afloat. 

This post-American Pie teen movie serves up all the essential elements of the genre — the high-school boys desperate to get laid; the embarrassing disasters that befall them on the way; boozy parties and unimpressed girls, etc — but does it with a scabrous and intelligent wit. Seth (Jonah Hill) and Eric (Michael Cerra, from TV’s Arrested Development) are high schoolers who plan to provide booze for a party and thus ensure the gratitude (and sexual favours) of its female attendees. Sadly, an idiot friend going by the fake-ID pseudonym of “McLovin” and two utterly corrupt and drunken cops are among the characters that foil their plans. Superbad stands out from the standard teen-movie crowd with its slacker dialogue, universally funny performances and an unexpected sweetness in the friendship between the sex-crazed Seth and the slightly more diffident Eric. For those with a high tolerance for exuberant crudity, belly laughs are guaranteed. 

Writer/director Judd Apatow follows up his hit “slacker” comedy The 40 Year Old Virgin with another refreshingly bold entry in a genre formerly mired in facile, post-Farrelly brothers gross-out. Pudgy, curly-haired Seth Rogen (a charismatic supporting player in Virgin) plays a harmless pothead who impregnates Katherine Heigl’s media career girl during a drunken one-night stand. Prompted by the impending birth to give the relationship a go, our odd couple learn lessons about responsibility and life in general, but to hilarious rather than schmaltzy effect. Married-with-kids Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (also Virgin alumni) are the foils for the younger pair, and Rogen’s buddies, led by Jonah Hill, the geek chorus. Thanks to quality, near-the-knuckle repartee and believable chemistry between Rogen and Grey’s Anatomy star Heigl (Apatow can certainly write for women), Knocked Up proves that hit comedy doesn’t have to dumb down for its demographic.