KNOCKED UP

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Shotgun Marriage
L.A. Hook Up Gets Seriously Funny
By Cole Smithey

Writer/director Judd Apatow ("The 40 Year Old Virgin") shatters romantic comedy conventions to create a side-splitting comedy hinged on fundamental differences between men and women.

Jewish slacker Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) lives a frat house existence smoking endless bong-hits and playing refereed games of ping-pong with his four puerile housemates.

Fate intervenes on the guys' "brilliant" employment substitution strategy to launch "FleshofTheStars.com," a website delineating the placement of nude scenes in movies, after Ben shares an unlikely one-night stand of unprotected drunken sex with "E! Entertainment" television reporter Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl).

Alison's "hottie" status doesn't stop her from making tenuous peace with Ben's unkempt appearance and laid-back sense of humor after she discovers that she's pregnant with his child.

A scene where Alison and her control-freak sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) employ multiple at-home pregnancy tests goes over the top in a candid display of feminine kookiness on toilet seat parade. Debbie's even-keeled husband Pete (Paul Rudd) gets an accidental glimpse to just how many pregnancy tests it takes to convince them of Alison's condition.

Having just been promoted to an on-screen television interviewer, against the wishes of a comically catty co-worker, Alison tries to keep her pregnancy a secret from her employers. Interviews with stars like James Franco (playing himself) go screwy as Alison's bouts of morning sickness inelegantly disrupt the video-taped proceedings.

The blending of real-life celebrity culture into the story lends a distinctly L.A. milieu that's funny for it blushing behind-the-scenes truthfulness. Apatow deftly moves, bends, and blurs class division judgments in a haze of Southern Californian consciousness. There's plenty of social substance for the laughs to stick to here. 

Compatibility is more than skin deep as Ben attempts to step up to the plate of responsibility for Alison in spite of his unemployed status and lazy habits. Ben hedges his bets by lunching with his amiable dad (Harold Ramis) to ask for advice, only to get a "roll-with-the-punches" answer that may explain his dad's record of multiple divorces.

Ben tries hard to satisfy Alison's expectations by buying a stack of advice books on having babies, and by making the rounds with her in search of the right gynecologist to assist with the birth when the time comes. Singer/songwriter Loudon Wainwright III makes a witty cameo as a typically Los Angeles brand of OBGYN physician. Judging from the movie, there aren't too many worthy gynecologists working in Los Angeles.

Snickers go through the roof more than a few times, not the least of which during an attempted love-making session where Ben's queasiness about bothering or "hurting" the baby makes for a defining moment of weighty humor, so to speak. The movie swings between surprisingly uninhibited personal interactions and contextualizing scenes of public interactions where harsh opinions are expressed. Ben's buddies form a peanut gallery of advice and information that would send steam from the ears of Alison's naysayer sister if she ever heard them. Debbie presents the movie's essential antagonist. We know this for certain when she drags Ben and Alison along to spy on Pete, who she suspects is cheating.

Debbie's unfounded suspicions spurs Ben and Pete to bond over a psychedelic mushroom-enhanced getaway to Las Vegas for a Cirque du Soleil performance that scares Ben right down to his plimsoul. Apatow really knows how to milk humor from cultural touchstones. Alison and Debbie make a coinciding Vegas visit that imparts a reality check to both women about their perceived standing as club-hopping chicks with unlimited powers of persuasion.

For all of its raunchy humor and eye-popping sight gags, "Knocked Up" wins as a comedy for its open embrace of hormonal differences that send men and women to opposite corners to address individual nagging issues before coming together again to move forward.

The ensemble performances flex together well in off-kilter ways that underscore the sense of a Los Angeles community of like-minded individuals freely expressing themselves. Seth Rogen is a comic revelation with a disarming delivery that punishes you funny bone. With the exception of the poisonous Debbie, everyone's heart is pretty much in the right place. And at least Ben eventually puts Debbie in her place before Alison gives birth under the supervision of a control freak gynecologist. "Knocked Up" is an instant classic.

Rated R. 132 mins.