KNOCKED UP (2007)

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KNOCKED UP: THE STORK IS AT THE DOOR

By: David Kobylanski

“This is Alison’s life…” A flourishing career in television… “This is Ben’s Life…” And it’s sad if it was planned… “Their story was supposed to be over after one night but eight weeks later…” She’s pregnant… with a baby?

We were once introduced to a 40 Year Old Virgin and it seems now Knocked Up takes us to a different unplanned couple to show us what happens after. A lot of familiar faces pop up behind and in front of the camera as they give birth to this film.

The story begins with two separate and mismatched individuals in the forms of Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) and Ben Stone (Seth Rogen). Alison is an up-and-coming entertainment reporter for E! living in her sister and bother-in-law’s nicely furnished luxury pool house. Will a promotion give her the chance to get a place of her own? Don’t get ahead of yourself. Ben Stone on the other hand lives with a few roommates, lives off a $14000 payment of legal compensation from childhood while watching movies with nudity and recording their findings for the creation of their own website profiling all of it. Yet, their idea already exists on the internet anyways. From the onset, you pretty much can predict he’ll need a real job and ambition may not be his strong suit.

One night Alison goes out with her sister, playfully meets and drinks with Ben Stone and a buddy of his. Once Alison is left alone with Ben, they party up the dance floor and shake their hips and slide their feet out of the club and back to Alison’s pool house. Right when’s he’s about to slide a condom on in the heat of passion, Alison blurts out the words for him to “do it already,” to which he responds to literally by dropping the condom on the ground. Things go well until he says the wrong things during breakfast and their out of each other’s lives for the next eight weeks when Alison suspects a pregnancy.

The remainder of the movie is a meandering of hatred and mixed feelings and the preparation of motherhood and fatherhood. But will it only be on weekends is the question for Ben when he just can’t get his act together.

Judd Apatow who, like 40 Year Old Virgin, directs this film falls short of the glory he found with a virgin. Katherine Heigl gives a sweet and believable performance as a woman juggling the demands of her potential career, motherhood and unnerving feelings for the definite father which she doesn’t know if she wants to be with permanently. Seth Rogen plays a stoner and sort of a chubby and overgrown slob but you never really fall in love with him, but rather the idea and intentions he’s supposed to be conveying. It’s not a storybook romance but it tries to be with modern values and unexpected situations. The movie does overstay its nine months a tad bit and doesn’t end premature or quite right either. A baby arrives at the end of about 130 minutes of screen time. This film may have used either scenes to be played out in a quicker pace or some shots just completely edited and cut down by about twenty minutes. It seems more could have just been in less. But don’t judge to harshly. Perhaps the editor had to get to the hospital himself. Even so, the movie does explicitly refer to quite a bit of sexuality, a little nudity openly but is heartfelt considering all that’s said and doesn’t make you feel so guilty after watching it. After all, sexuality is quite a big part of being knocked up. Any fear of being viewed as pervert diminishes after the film shows the doctor’s point of view between the legs when a woman gives birth. If you still get a smile and think you’re a pervert, you’re not, you’re just a psycho.

So how about one of these nights, you and your other grow up and curl up to find out where babies come from in Knocked Up on DVD.

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