Year One (2009)

You won't be disappointed!

Good concept, poorly executed.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I can't understand all the bad reviews. Black and Cera are a great team! Together they could make alot of funny buddy-films. Remind me of the dynamic between Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. Even Abbott and Costello. Film has an awesome supporting cast, as well. As much as I love this film I was surprised by the budget of $60 million. Seriously, 60,000,000? Huh.

This is only the second Jack Black film I've watched apart from School of Rock, which I liked a lot. I wonder which film is more typical of a "Jack-Black film". I hope it's not this one.Jack Black plays a particularly unlikable version of his slob with big ambitions role that came across to me as a bumbling jerk. The plot follows him and his cliché geek side-kick on a journey through old testament times that is more than a little reminiscent of Life of Brian. In fact, I got the impression that this film really wants to be Life of Brian with its own brand of reluctant chosen one and even some very similar individual scenes. But Life of Brian was absurd, yet sharp-witted, had excellent timing, black humour and a degree of self-awareness that still did not require it to roll its eyes at the camera. Year One has only a few clever moments. I liked the role of Olivia Wilde as the scheming princess and also the way politics played out at the king's court. But that is more the stuff of a serious movie.Year One is supposed to be a comedy. To quote my favourite reviewer: a comedy has to be judged by whether or not it made you laugh. And again there were a few moments that made me smile like when the two main guys make some iconic biblical scenes happen by bumbling into them. Sadly, it seems for each of these moments there is at least one crude one that drags on to the point where it's not funny any longer or way beyond cringe-worthy. Pee jokes and poop jokes and fart jokes and some middle school level sexual innuendo are drawn out as if the director was trying to ensure that even the dimmest of dim-wits could not miss the point the movie was trying to make. It's as if someone was screaming in your face: "Get it? This right here is supposed to be funny. Have you got it yet? Have you?!"What I found shocking is that with a slightly different cast you could dismiss a lot of this as an "Adam Sandler movie" but maybe others are picking up this style. I think it goes to show the kind of opinion studios have of their target audience. I honestly don't know who I would recommend this kind of film to. Best not recommend it to anyone.

Jack Black has always had an appealing personality which always lightens up the screen, especially with movies such as High Fidelity (2000), Shallow Hal (2001), The School of Rock (2003) and Tropic Thunder (2008). Not even his presence in Year One could even save this movie from being banished back to the stone age. Humour was non-existent from start to finish and anything that was meant to be funny just wasn't working. Overall, this was a movie to forget.Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera) are banished from their village after eating from the forbidden tree. As they make their way to Sodom, they encounter a variety of biblical characters and somehow change the course of history.The late Harold Ramis who always struck box office gold as an actor with Stripes (1981) and Ghostbusters (1984) and in the director's chair with Groundhog Day (1993) and Analyse This (1999) struck out with this forgettable comedy.The only redeemable thing about Year One was when the movie ended. Such a shame that this could have been light hearted entertainment but in the end, the movie just did not work. Give this a miss.2/10.

Comedies, with the exception of Rom-Com's seem to get the short end of the ratings stick, but I ask what's harder these days: to jam in a bunch of special effects on screen, or make an audience laugh, and I'd say it's the latter. Year One has many laugh out loud moments and unlike many comedies they aren't all exhausted in the first 15 minutes. The humour is silly and no, don't look for sophistication, but when I think of all the poorly written SNL based films and other comedies that border on the absurd, Year One doesn't deserve the poor ratings it has. Watch it again, or for the first time whatever the case may be and be surprised at the jokes. I don't like rating movies on one general scale so I will say it's a 9/10 in the pure comedy genre - in that it makes me laugh to this day.