The two central characters Alison (Katherine Heigl) and Ben (Seth Rogen) meet at a bar. Where Alison is celebrating her promotion at the E! network with her sister while Ben is celebrating the fact that he’s feeling strong after seeing Eric Bana in Munich with his stoner roommates. He’s overweight, immature and poor. She’s sexy, loaded and desperate. They get completely shitfaced and they go back to her house, and when they’re naked in bed there seems to be some miscommunication regarding putting a condom on. Anyway, they fuck. Seven weeks later, due to that nights events she’s blowing chunks in front of James Franco.

Despite all the sex jokes and offensive one-liners the film always seems to maintain it’s credibility. Dealing with issues like parenthood, responsibility, maturity, loneliness and even pink-eye makes this more than just a comedy but rather sentimental. The other major element to Knocked Up’s success is the cast. This has to be the best damn ensemble I have seen in quite sometime. Every character is given ample time to grow and make you love them. Apatow’s repertoire of comedic geniuses return. Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Jonah Hill, Martin Starr and Jay Baruchel all bring intelligence and life into each other’s characters. Rudd and Mann’s marriage offer a hilarious counterpoint to Ben and Alison.

I emphatically enjoyed Knocked Up. The only qualm is that it was definitely too long. At 129 minutes, the movie seems to drag on during the latter stages.

While the film has a great deal of foul-mouthed jokes and enough pop-culture references to keep a film aficionados orgasm lasting for weeks, there’s a lot more to the movie that makes this special. The reality and seriousness is enough to warrant this film to be as a great substitute for sex ed, as well as, the funniest comedy of the year...(so far, Apatow’s hilarious new film Superbad is out in September in Australia. Trailer available at Sony.com/superbad).

out of ten

Reviewed by Dino White