Year One

A Partially Educated Review of Year One

In which many talented people combine their mental aberrations and expect us to sit through it.

Cast

Jack Black – Zed

Michael Cera – Oh

Oliver Platt – High Priest

David Cross – Cain

Christopher Mintz-Plasse – Isaac

Vinnie Jones – Sargon

Hank Azaria – Abraham

Juno Temple – Eema

Olivia Wilde – Princess Inanna

June Diane Raphael – Maya

Xander Berkeley – King

Gia Carides – Queen

Horatio Sanz – Enmebaragesi

David Pasquesi – Prime Minister

Matthew J. Willig – Marlak

Story by Harold Ramis

Screenplay by Harold Ramis, Gene Stupnitsky & Lee Eisenberg

Directed by Harold Ramis

The main criticism that's often thrown at Judd Apatow's films is that they're far too long. It's not something that I'm going to try and deny as, quite often, it's a valid complaint. However, I would rather sit through a decent film that's a bit too long than one that's just bad from the start. It's with that in mind that I have my own rule. If a film involving Judd Apatow (in any capacity) runs nearer an hour and a half than two hours, it's probably awful. There's exceptions to that rule, with Walk Hard being the biggest. Most of the time, though, it's fairly accurate with Fun With Dick And Jane, Drillbit Taylor and Wanderlust all serving to back this up. Chief of them all though (and I'm sure you've all guessed where I'm going with this) stands Year One.

To say it's a disaster is to understate the point through the employment of an overused word, but it feels like a film that the word was invented for. Every single element of this film drops to it's knees in a spectacularly pathetic attempt to beg for your amused approval. I'd be remiss to say it all fails. It doesn't. Jokes involving the invention of the wheel elicited some laughs from me that made me think it was kicking into gear. A cart chase that follows soon after gave me even more hope that the film was going to be great, with a merely lackluster beginning. Unfortunately, those jokes are both done within the first half an hour and they really are the film's last laughs.

So, where does the blame lie? Everywhere really. We'll start from the top though. Harold Ramis' directorial career has pretty much lived off the fact that he made Groundhog Day. It's not his only decent film, but it stands out well above the rest. Deservedly so, it's a comedy classic. In addition, it's not a surprise he's capable of making a bad film because Bedazzled exists, but even that had some semblance of comic capability to it. Year One feels like a load of people coming together who are far too sure of their own comedic brilliance and have just been left to their own devices. A controlling hand should have been there to say the simple and necessary word: No. It's in this where Harold Ramis has failed far more than he he ever has before. Even more than when he accepted a part in Airheads.

What of these comedy geniuses though? Why is it they're failing so much when they've previously demonstrated commendable skill in the genre? It's simply because they don't blend well together. Both Michael Cera and Jack Black take on their well-known personas, standing as complete polar opposites. However, instead of this working to provide humour, they instead expose the irritating flaws in each other's characters. I used to think I liked Jack Black, but I honestly don't. He irritated me to the point that he nearly ruined Tropic Thunder. He bored me into a catatonic stupor with Nacho Libre and I'll save my grievances with Envy for a later date. He even grates on me in School Of Rock, leaving me somewhat baffled as to why I still like that film. Nonetheless, you can't watch Jack Black and get too annoyed when he plays a cocksure, slightly deluded and loud-mouthed character through which the comedy is pulled out of his own delusions, since that is, after all, the character he's made his career out of. Michael Cera plays the antithesis to this: shy, awkward and anything but confident. If comedy comes from conflict, then the pairing of these two should be a walk in the park, but instead of helping each other, it feels like they're trying to expose the worst aspects of each other. Cera becomes whiny and pitiful, kicking up a slight fuss every time Black tries to force him into something he doesn't want to do, before giving in and becoming Black's bitch. As for Black, he just comes off as an arrogant prick. Neither are fun to be in the company of, leaving you to side with the other cavemen who hate them. Every time Matthew J. Willig's Marlak threatens to "kill them where they stand", you wish he'd just gone ahead and done it a long time ago.

Elsewhere, the rest of the cast are comprised of either cameos or glorified cameos. Oliver Platt contributes to some of the film's many gross-out gags, but unfortunately these gags are being done better by The Farrelly Brothers even today, let alone when they were in their prime. Even Hank Azaria fails to be funny and that almost never happens. Christopher Mintz-Plasse wheels out McLovin AGAIN and David Cross remains under the illusion that he's funny. Then, just when you thought the film was torturous enough, Vinnie Jones arrives. As for female characters, forget it, none of them are given any real chance to try and get some laughs and they're there purely for the purpose of eye-candy. In this department, they succeed. Sadly, anyone who's seen Olivia Wilde and Juno Temple in other films will know that they're capable of so much more.

It's the obligatory outtakes sequence that proves where a lot of the film's problems really lie. First off, they're not funny, even for cheap laughs. If there's one place where it's easy to get a cheap laugh, it's the outtakes. There's no imagination or wit to them, it is literally people forgetting their lines, combined with Jack Black providing the bodily omissions and Bill Hader wheeling out his Al Pacino impression. A good impression? Yes. Funny the eighteenth time? Not really. Critically though, the outtakes expose that the cast and crew had fun making this film. Morecambe and Wise didn't enjoy making comedy. It drove them mad. Pull out any documentary on them and you'll see people backing this up. If you're having fun making a comedy, it's probably no fun for the audience because you need to be scrutinizing every joke and making sure that it's funny. The result is that over-analysis makes you sick of that joke, but it ensures that it's enjoyable for more people than just yourself. 

There isn't a single person involved in Year One who hasn't failed in some capacity, meaning that the blame is even and can be spread between all of them. To say that careers have suffered because of this film isn't a longshot. Ramis hasn't directed since, bar an episode of The Office. Black has only really had Kung Fu Panda to provide him with any success and that's not really sold off his name. As for Cera, he's faced an unprecedented swan-dive with the terrible Youth In Revolt and the, undeserved, commercial disaster that was Scott Pilgrim being the only two things of real note he's done since then. Year One is a film that has seriously hurt careers. The film itself is incapable of providing a silver lining to that fact.

ONE out of five

Contains possibly the worst comedy of modern times. And it's only possibly, because I haven't seen Movie 43 yet.