Knocked Up

The 40 Year Old Virgin team strike gold again with the funniest film of the year, if not the century. The set-up is straightforward enough: Heigl becomes pregnant after a drunken night with Rogen and the pair spend the rest of the film in and out of favour with each other, while trying to do what's best for the baby. A couple of years back, before Wedding Crashers and The 40 Year Old Virgin gave birth to a run of sex comedies aimed at a more mature audience, I would have told you that Hollywood simply didn't know how to create warm, intelligent, hilarious comedies that have something to say about the human condition. But writer/director Apatow and his collaborators seem to have almost perfected the art of showing real people doing real things, behaving in a real way that only serves to make them more likeable. While Knocked Up is perhaps not a film to go and see with your mum, it isn't crass just for the hell of it. It's a joy to be in the hands of filmmakers who intuitively know the difference between rude and crude, who know that horny and heartfelt can exist in tandem and that jokes about race and sexuality are not the same as racism and homophobia. Scenes flow organically from one to the next, with no contrivance to set something up just for the sake of a gag, and you won't see many comedies in which even the smallest of supporting characters get the chance to do something hilarious. Some sequences are breath-catchingly funny and laughs continue to ripple long into the next scene. Over-length (especially a hideously extended birth scene) and one too many subplots are the only complaints, but otherwise Knocked Up is not just the best comedy of the year, it's one of the best films of the year, and one of the funniest films ever made. [Paul Greenwood]