Maybe this is just the homelessness talking, but after a while, doing the same thing every day gets kind of old.
Could be things are different when your breakfast, lunch, and dinner are nachos served off Megan Fox's tummy instead of yard-leaf salad served off the lid of your neighbor's trash can. (Right, technically not my neighbor, but I don't know what else you call it when you live under a guy's front porch and he doesn't know about it.) I might even enjoy a routine if that routine were part of an alternate life where I still had a face.
Things get confusing, however, when someone as all-powerful as a movie star keeps repeating himself. I will confess to no more than being vaguely aware that there are plenty of awkward virgins out there, but is it strictly necessary for Michael Cera to represent all of them? Forget making a living reprising that role, it's getting dull enough just watching it yet again in the regrettably unhilarious Year One.
Jack Black and Michael Cera are the losers of their primitive tribe. Tired of being snubbed by women and bullied by men, Black eats the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge. Rather than finding enlightenment, he and Cera are swiftly banished from the land.
No sooner have they reached civilization than they find many of their tribe have been captured and enslaved. With the two women who rebuffed them among the captives, Black and Cera have the chance to redeem themselves if only they can free their loves.
I hear Year One was originally intended to be a you-are-there documentary shot on the back of a time-traveling pterodactyl, but after the terror-bird's first week of craft services billed in at over $500K of raw shrimp, that plan got scrapped. Huh. I may be confusing this with a dream of mine -- the ones where people wear clothes are so rare I naturally assume they're awful, awful reality. But a rushed backup plan would explain why, as a comedy, Year One is sporadically funny at best.
That's okay. Schindler's List wasn't that great a comedy either, but it still did all right. Thing is, Year One doesn't have much of a story, either, and the bulk of what there is consists of Black and Cera stumbling into a mishmash of stories from the Old Testament.
Don't get me wrong, that stuff about not eating lions and destroying your enemies by lighting foxes on fire is a classic of narrative logic and cohesion. It's just that the trio of writers (including Harold Ramis, who also directed) really doesn't know what to do with these references beyond tossing a bucket of modern attitude on them, classing the joint up with a joke about farts, then letting its all-star comedian brigade pick up the slack.
It does have a cast so talented they could make Yahweh Himself laugh so hard He couldn't stop Himself. When a dude such as Matt Besser can't get a meatier part than "Man in Crowd," you know they got some serious heat ahead of him.
Which makes Year One's lack of humor all the more puzzling. Apparently it was edited down from an R to a PG-13, which is usually like cutting the parts where people have sex out of a porno, so I guess we'll get to see whether the uncut version is any better once it hits DVD. (Just bear in mind it's a Judd Apatow co-production, so don't try that experiment unless you've got five hours to spare.)
But you know what, I doubt that's it. Year One simply doesn't have any balls, not in its tepid biblical parodies and not in its unearned moral, a message so feebly inspirational it was probably yoinked from a coffee shop readerboard. It's minimally enjoyable and eminently skippable.
Grade: C