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Knocked Up: Extended And Unprotected Special Edition (2 Discs)In a year that otherwise struggled to deliver where comedies were concerned, Knocked Up proved to be a very welcome treasure trove of laughs. It's from Judd Apatow, the man behind The 40 Year Old Virgin and the excellent TV show Freaks and Geeks, and sits easily as an equal to both. It's also a long-awaited showcase for the talents of Seth Rogen, who proves with some conviction that he can headline a movie.
The premise of Knocked Up is simple. Seth Rogen and Kathryn Heigl share, for differing reasons, a one-night stand, and several weeks later, the latter discovers she's pregnant. Given that Rogen's character has been jobless for years, and that Heigl is trying to build a TV career, the two don't prove to be a logical match, yet as the pregnancy progresses, they try valiantly to get to know one another. The narrative itself is quite straightforward, but it's the execution and characters that lift it significantly. Apatow knows how to direct comedy, and with a script peppered with plenty of guffaw-out-loud moments and situations, he wrings very hearty laughs from the material. Plus, while its Rogen and Heigl who power the film, the supporting cast is simply superb, particularly the collection of people that Rogen's character surrounds himself with. It's perhaps guilty of running ten minutes too long, and there's little to surprise in the story itself, yet Knocked Up is nonetheless a terrific, earthy and grounded comedy, with so much to enjoy. It's hard to single out individual moments, and instead it simply seems more appropriate to declare Knocked Up as one of the best, and most rewatchable, comedies of the last few years. Don't miss it.--Simon Brew |
Average User Rating: 60% (51 Reviews) | |
| 5 / 5 | I loved this film - and I hate 'romantic comedies'!
Dr. George L. Sik (Epsom, Surrey) - 28 August 2007 Put me in front of Love Actually, Notting Hill or When Harry Met Sally and some inbuilt quirk of nature makes me fall asleep to prevent the involuntary gagging reflex. I quite simply detest the 'romantic comedy' genre - which is usually neither romantic nor comic. Yet I loved this... How so? This is genuinely a film that men will find funny AND women will find funny AND both will find funny if they watch it together. From one-night stand to baby, it could all be mawkish or sentimental or simply brutal - but it's none of these things. The situations are funny because they feel true. There is no attempt to idealise unrealistically, and it is the truth of the characters' reactions to their circumstances that makes it compelling. You genuinely want to know how it's all going to end. The supporting actors are uniformly excellent, too. All in all, this is a must-see comedy. ...And there's no Andie McDowell, no Rupert Everett, no Hugh Grant and no Meg Ryan. Good.... Read Full Review » |
| 4 / 5 | Apatow does it again - funny, thoughtful and sweet
M. Gardner "Afro Matt" (Somerset, England) - 27 December 2007 For those of us who saw The 40 Year Old Virgin and came away wishing that they'd given 'that funny guy with the beard' roles that could have saved Bruce Almighty and suchlike fro mediocrity, Knocked Up is like our prayers getting answered. Rogen is on fantastic form as Ben - a waster seemingly locked in a happy stasis of living off court reparations with a house of similar stoners, playing duel and table tennis, gtting high, and watching movies for nude bits in the hope of setting up an internet lexion of film nudity - the man who has a drunken liason with TV presenter and career gal Alison (Katherine Heigl) and gets her pregnant. The movie's story could be summed up with the phrase 'deal with it' - it is the story of how these two work out their fundamental differences and prepare for the birth. The film works because Judd Apatow, much like in his movie debut, manages to juggle the vulgar and the sweet, the crass and the romantic, without ever seeming to side to heavily on either side. An 'eurgh' is never too far away from an 'aww' and vice versa. For critics of the film who have suggested that this wouldn't happen - that they'd just go their separate ways - you have to say that had that happened it would have been a pretty short film: guy knocks up girl, girl deals with it on own. The End. No. Instead Apatow looks at the conflict as they struggle to make it work. Unlike most romcom heroes, Ben is a highly flawed character: yes he does have genuine goodwill and yes he does foolish American bumbling very well and comes across as endearing, but he is also a lazy guy who is incredibly scared of growing up and leaving behind his childhood. Again, much like the 40YOV, Apatow has created a field where his central protagonist is a clueless and afraid, and has to make tentative (often hilarious, sometimes tragic) steps into an area that is unknown. Heigl is excellent as Alison, exuding the same sense of comfortability in her role that fans of Grey's Anatomy will be instantly at home with. Her comic timing is perfectly equal to Rogen's and the chemistry between the two is wonderfully awkward. Again it has irritated me that there are those that have criticised the (alleged) lack of chemistry between the two leads. Rogen and Heigl, from their (importantly) drunken encounter, lurch from faux-responsible businesslike brusqueness about the whole thing, to being alternately scared, disappointed in one another, proud, earnest, optimistic, pessimistic - in short every nuance of the rollercoaster of emotion one would expect over those crucial nine months. They are backed up with wonderfully understated turns from Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann. In short Knocked Up is another Apatow success. It is by turns funny, dramatic, romantic, rude, crude and thought provoking. But it is a romantic comedy - there is no reason to make it the most gritty piece of realism - and so the sugar sweet ending may be forgiven at least if not endorsed. After all, most of Shakespeare's comedies ended up with the 'happily ever after' and he still managed to say a few things about relationships and society. If Judd Apatow is taking a couple of pages out of the Bard's textbook (eve if indirectly) in can hardly be a bad thing can it.... Read Full Review » |
| 5 / 5 | I SAW THIS YESTERDAY AT THE CINEMA
stuart "s.vernon" (MIDDLESBROUGH, ENGLAND) - 26 August 2007 Knocked Up is quite easily one of the best movies I have seen thus far this year. The story takes absolutely no time to be a drawn-out flick where you go, "Make it stop!" This movie is non-stop hilarity, a bit crude, but something that you can truly connect with and hits home with a heartwarming story of love and life. The movie has a simple premise: two people who are seemingly "living the dream"--Alison, an E! Channel Correspondent and Ben, a half-witted, pot-smoking celebrity nude website administrator along with his five estranged friends whom he also lives with--decide to hook up for a fateful one night stand after meeting at a night club. They do the nasty, and the two part ways after that. The story picks up once again 8 weeks later, as Allison finds herself pregnant with what she hilariously discovers to be Ben's child. At once we as the audience sympathize, even empathize with her at her situation with Ben and the pregnancy. As the movie proceeds we find ourselves riding through the radically changing lives of Ben and Alison from the moment that she breaks the news to him that he's the father to when they fall for each other to the "irreconcilable differences" and finally to the painful and slow phase of "growing up" and facing each other's, as well as their own, fears to accept and uncover the joys of giving life and becoming parents. Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl do a wondrous job of being the two people that "life came straight at, not caring about their plans". Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann, portraying Alison's brother-in-law and sister, are fantastic supporting cast as we often find parallels between the two couples and how they are something of "elders" that show Ben and Alison what it's like to be parents, working both against and for them. Hell, the entire cast is incredible, the comedic timing is impeccable. And Judd Apatow, the man behind the 40 Year Old Virgin, has created yet another heart-warming laugh riot that is its own creation, not simply a rehash of the 40 Year Old Virgin as some would be led to believe. GO WATCH THIS MOVIE!... Read Full Review » |
| 1 / 5 | Complete and utter rubbish
patrick 1916 (London) - 28 August 2007 Simple story but no comedy or heart in the delivery. Lazy waster impregnates beautiful tv presenter whilst they are both in a drunken stupour. 8 weeks later she discovers she is pregnant, decides to keep the baby and initiates contact with the layabout father. Please remember she did not give the idiot whose seed she is carrying a second thought until she deduced she is pregnant and then decides she needs to bond with him, totally presposterous scenario ,lots of this fanciful nonsense in this coarse dire movie. The whole story is lame, there is no chemistry or afection between the leads, there is no wit or humour. She is a sophisticated intelligent hard working reporter, he is a slob who mopes around all day. It is never explained what she would see in such a man, he has no redeeming qualities, is foul mouthed and lazy. In one telling scene he runs out of the house during an earthquake leaving his heavily pregnant girl friend to make her own way to safety. They have no connection, the movie has no charm and not a single funny moment, cant believe the reviews this movie is getting, the sooner it sinks without trace in my memory the better, it is a terrible indictment of movies that any one could discern a single redeeming quality in what is glorified soap opera, masquearading as some social commentary on our times. Any other movie would be preferable to this sub standard offering, a Tom & Jerry cartoon has more artistic merit than this humourless long winded tripe. If you want some some thing approaching chemistry try "to have or have not" with Bogart and Bacall, a work of genius. How "knocked up " was ever made is beyond me. How could movie making come to this.... Read Full Review » |
| 1 / 5 | Absolutely awful
Suhail Ahmad "suhail1052" - 19 September 2007 The premise of this film is based around the antics of the eye stingingly ugly, obnoxious, porcine loser 'Ben' (Seth Rogan), who by sheer dumb luck manages to spark a conversation with the lovely 'Alison' (Katherine Heigl), by buying her a beer in a club. He gets her drunk, they go back to her place and eight weeks later, she realises a most monumental calamity. She is pregnant and this Petri dish of pathogens `Ben' is the culprit. Given the circumstances, I am surprised that the only thing he managed to transmit to her, was just sperm. What is even more ridiculous, is that if Alison has not already been inflicted with such mountainous misfortune, she eventually attempts to better acquaint herself with this Diablo, by bringing it back in to her life and along the way, he and his cohort of bum friends make several obnoxious and not at all funny remarks, based on delusions of grandeur and a psychotic superiority complex. The film ends in a climax of absurdity (they have the baby and live happily ever after). I cannot believe I wasted my money on this amoebic dysentery of a film. It is not at all humorous, nor is it based on real life. It is just offensive. Watch it, only if you are a real life 'Ben'. ... Read Full Review » |
RRP
£20.00
Release Date
26 December 2007
Price Range
£4.99 - £15.99