Knocked up and about.

Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007)

It's easy to dismiss Judd Apatow's Knocked Up as another raunchy comedy where freakazoids and losers romp around with their glorified asshole-ness. A super-imposed pudgy face of Seth Rogen with his brazenly curly hair and slight smirk as if to shame on every chick flick poster and wannabe-heartthrob poseurs doesn't seem appealing either; what if this guy got you pregnant, asks the tagline (The other commercial poster sucks though). But when you realize that Apatow is the brains behind the memorable The 40-Year-Old Virgin, or if you have been an Apatow-vian since Freaks and Geeks (even I am not), that pudgy unlikeable face is a come-on.

Apatow has a gift for the romantic, but it doesn't clearly show with all the parading raunchiness courtesy of testosterone-driven males - guys locked up in their pubescent sexual angst are both the center of humor and sometimes heartbreak, but one will definitely arrive on that. That tug of heart creeps up slowly because you always find yourself in the surefire belly laughs with the endless sexual jests and back-to-back mishaps. In the end, you get that stupid guys who do realize how an asshole they are and you witness what they go through in the process of the realization, the attempt to change can be a bit, yes, mushy and sweet. But it's as real as it get and we buy that it can happen.

The plot can be abused perfectly in telenovela proportions: pretty, career-oriented lady getting a big break in life blows it all up when he meets a dope-smoking slacker who instead of going home and just wanking about her, miraculously gets her into bed. The girl is Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl of Grey's Anatomy), a once-production crew who is promoted as an entertainment show anchor (funny cameo by James Franco). To celebrate, she goes clubbing with her sister Debbie (Apatow's real-life partner Leslie Mann) and chanced upon Ben Stone (Seth Rogen), entirely the exact opposite of what is Alison, with his similar long-time slacker buddies on the verge of putting up Flesh of the Stars (a soft porn site devoted to databanking nude/sex scenes of celebs) and whose idea of food redounds to a one-year supply of copious spaghetti.

Oh yes, the miracles of being drunk and what loser-fantasies come true. Problem is: it turns out that Ben enamored by such a "score" misinterpreted the orgasmic "just do it!" remark into a throw-the-condom-and-just-get-to-it haste. Both wake up in entirely different moods, part ways, and meets again after 8 weeks in cataclysmically hilarious proportions. This is when it gets more all-over-the-floor hilarious when the opposite sexes exchange endless banter that makes you think where Apatow plucks his crisp punchliners like apple-picking in a lush orchard.

Rogen and Heigl are perfect for their roles but it helps than Mann and Paul Rudd who plays Debbie's husband Pete are there to supply added funny moments. The married couple seem to mirror the foreboding circumstance that Alison and Ben would most likely get into. It can get tediously for a comedy but it does so to give light to the other couple's characters as well as the equally funny sidekicks of Ben especially Chewbaca-Martin Scorsese on Dope-vagina-looking-John Lennon wannabe Martin. 

Apatow gets smack down to the pregnancy crisis so refreshingly honest. This is where the individual hang-ups rear its heads and the irreconcilability of the two personalities scream at each other. But in this difficult transition, the unlikely couple gets to know each other more and sincerely attempt to foster not just friendship and eventual intimacy but the acceptability of each others differences. There's lots of, no, plenty, plenty, of gross-out moments and sex (simulated and real) but there's a lot of heart too, when you come to think of it. So I think it's perfectly okay to bring your girlfriend.