News Knocked Up

Knocked Up

Here's a real good review of the themes in the movie, "Knocked Up" that I hope everyone has seen. This review is a rant and is a little too serious, but it's good. BTW, the movie was Hilarious!!!




Look: I’m not saying that writer/director Judd Apatow (The 40 Year-Old Virgin) has not given us an accurate representation of the state of modern relationships as many, perhaps most Americans experience it. It’s that he’s celebrating as charming and inevitable and amusing and sweet what anyone who is that apparently rare specimen -- an actual, genuine grownup -- should be decrying as deplorable.

Men are not necessarily juvenile morons even if they like to play video games. (Some women like video games too.) Women are not necessarily hormonally driven control freaks even if we burst into tears for no reason one or two days a month. (Some men are expressively emotional too.) That this even needs to be said is indicative of the horrifically low self-esteem with which just about everyone holds themselves (or so we’re supposed to believe), and the contempt with which just about everyone holds the opposite sex (or so we’re supposed to believe).

Oh, but it’s so charming, so real.

I want to puke.

Is this really how Americans see marriage? There’s no romance before it, obviously, if it’s “honest” and “real” how TV reporter Alison (Katherine Heigl) and full-time slacker Ben (Seth Rogen: You, Me and Dupree, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy) end up in the sack fumbling drunkenly at each other, if he’s stupid enough to think she doesn’t want him to use a condom and she’s stupid enough not to realize he isn’t wearing one. (Hello? Latex!) There’s no romance after the wedding, if it’s “honest” and “real” how Alison’s sister, Debbie (Leslie Mann), and her husband, Pete (Paul Rudd: Night at the Museum, p.s.), can barely restrain from strangling each other on a daily basis. There is no genuine romance to be found at all if men are nothing but large children who are constitutionally incapable of growing up until some woman forces them to, perhaps by announcing she’s pregnant (and why are those women sleeping with those overgrown children in the first place?). There is no genuine romance at all if women are nags who then prevent those men from being themselves. There is no geniune romance if men are merely victims of Stockholm syndrome who come to adore the captors who treat them like shit.

“I wanna rip your fucking head off because you’re so fucking stupid,” Debbie tells Pete at one point. And it’s charming, it’s real.

Why does anyone tolerate this? Why would anyone want to stay married to someone she seriously believes is fucking stupid? Why would anyone stay married to someone who speaks to him that way?

And I suppose I’m the one who’s being unrealistic about marriage.

I need to get off this planet.

Look: Alison doesn’t even want to touch Ben when she finds him in her bed the morning after their alcohol-fueled romp. If he’s really that disgusting, that much of a loser -- and I’m not saying he is, except that the film casts him that way -- why would she even consider having his child? A smart gal calls the clinic, gets an abortion, feels bad about it or doesn’t, and learns a lesson about not taking drunken losers home, or not having sex with anyone two hours after you meet him without a condom, a diaphragm, and the pill. If she wasn’t already smart enough to know these things before, and how the fuck could she not have been?

Of course, the word “abortion” is not uttered once here, though a couple of “bad” characters suggest “taking care of it.” A suggestion that is instantly dismissed, though it’s never really clear why. How much more icky could it be than being unable to touch the person who knocked you up in the first place?

Oh ho, but girls are silly, until they get their pregnant hooks in a guy, at which point they turn into shrieking harpies. And guys are horny dorks who are so sexually desperate they’ll debase themselves -- and allow themselves to be debased by women -- in exchange for regular sex. Which they won’t get anyway, the suckers, because their wives will perpetually deem them unworthy. “I buy these nice towels and he wanks into them,” Debbie says about Pete, the implication being, of course, not that masturbation is a totally appropriate bit of fun even if you’re getting plenty of action with your partner, but that he’s not getting any with his partner and what a loser he is for being frustrated by not having sex with his wife.


The twisted, demented reasoning at work in that one moment of Knocked Up makes me want to scream some more, and lunge at another drink. Who wouldn’t want to have sex with Paul Rudd? He’s adorable. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with his Pete. Debbie is simply a horror. And yet she’s supposedly representative of American women.

I’d like to let citizens of other nations know that there are at least a few American women who aren’t like that.

The problem is not that Knocked Up is “liberal” because it’s about casual sex and having a baby out of wedlock. The problem is that it is horribly conservative about embracing and enjoying an adult version of sexuality that has moved beyond dorm-room-esque groping. One night with some guy you don’t even know does not mean you must tie yourself to him for the rest of your life... unless you think that women must be punished for sex. Oh, but it’s not punishment: you get an adorable baby out of the deal! And you get to “train” a man! When Ben says something crude during their “second date,” after Alison’s decided against all reason and logic that she’s going to have the baby, she grimaces and says, “For the sake of getting to know one another, can you not talk like that?” But that’s who he is. Hearing him say this crude and juvenile thing is getting to know him. But Alison doesn’t really mean what she says. What she means is, Would he please pretend to be something he isn’t? Would he please conform to her unrealistic expectations about what he is supposed to be, instead of what he really is? (I hate this: Knocked Up is so fucked up that it’s got me defending an overgrown frat boy who should have grown the hell up years earlier.) And he will conform, because however obnoxious and insulting he can be at dinner, she’ll still be in bed with him later that evening, because she’s trying to force romance into a situation in which it doesn’t exist.

What. The. Fuck. This may be “honest” and “real,” but so is cancer and the IRS and the moldy stuff that grows in the vegetable bin of the fridge when you don’t clean it for two years. That doesn’t make it “charming” or “sweet.”

I hate that everyone is going to love this depressing stamp of approval on an absurd, juvenile status quo. I hope Alison and Ben and Debbie and Pete -- and everyone who sees themselves in this movie -- are all saving for their kids’ therapy, cuz they’re gonna be so seriously fucked up they’ll marry the first loser who comes along and has drunken sex with them.

i refuse to see this movie.

one of the communities i belong to is a childfree community (meaning we're a bunch of people who don't have children and never intend to have them), and a large portion of the member base went to see it...all came back complaining about how gross it was, how they were nauseous from the birth scene, how they never want that to happen to their bodies, etc.

i want to know just what would drive a person to see this movie in the first place...and if you claim to be childfree, why the flying hell are you going to see a movie about BEING PREGNANT??!?

that's all i can say about it. :shrugs:

why are you guys childfree. what are the reasons behind it

reasons vary from person to person, but i can't stand the idea of having children...i've never wanted them, and being around kids for any length of time (unless they're super well behaved) gives me migraines from the stress. i don't like holding babies, i don't like babysitting (doing it when i was younger solidified it). i don't mind kids in small chunks, but i get to give them back. i HATE when people say "it'll change when it's your kids" - i already have children. they have fur and scales, and they're better behaved than most adults. at least i didn't have to teach them to pee and poop in the proper areas! i'm not a fan of the whole projectile vomiting thing that children seem to master before they're 6 months old.

i'm also selfish. i like having private time. having a child would force me to give up a lot of my personal freedom, and i find the mere idea of that incredibly stifling. suffice it to say, it's "not for me" - if i could get a local doctor to actually perform the procedure, i would have been sterilized by now. besides, i'm a superbitch. y'all have seen that here. i know i wouldn't be a good parent for that reason, among others.

It was a funny movie, but not as funny as Wedding Crashers.

i saw it at a screening in may and loved it

my rant is based entirely on the reactions of the community. i won't see it because every preview i've seen makes it out to be as retarded as 40 year old virgin...but i don't get why these people will see the movie then complain about the birth scene. if you don't want to see such things, don't go...it's not that hard a concept to figure out.

it changes regularly...i don't have a top 5.

aka lesbians

Personally, if you're against having children, then so be it. But it's a comedy ... it isn't like the Discovery Channel made it as a documentary. Are you one of those people who watch those movies that are supposed to make you think about life and all that crap?

i know plenty of married couples who never want kids. don't start tossing the label around...you're making a pretty bad assumption.

no, i just find every commercial for the movie to be nauseatingly boring.

no, just a funny joke

well ... lesbian or not ... it is your choice ... thank goodness. As far as the whole movie thing goes, some people don't like funny movies and that's okay. It's just strangely odd, but it's okay.

i like funny movies...but movies like that, which appear stupid in commercials, generally end up boring to me.

i like the idea of playing fetch with little kids

generally speaking, it was a pretty bad movie

mindless entertainment, if you will

well it was def. overrated but it wasnt a bad movie at all.

precisely.

mindless entertainment is what i seek sometimes.

for example, kung pow, zoolander....

so much quotables....lol

i didn't skirt it, i answered honestly. i don't have favorites.

i have favorite movies and nothing can beat it, but things come close

I have favorite movies!!!!
1: Ghostbusters I and II (that counts as one favorite because I said so)
2: American History X
3: Office Space
4: Any Johnny Depp movie (that counts as one too ... ^^)
5: High Tension

I LOVE swingers ... that movie rocked! breakfast club is stupendous as well.

pans labyrinth
mo betta blues
do the right thing
wedding crashers
rush hour 1&2
tombstone & unforgiven
alfie... and...
CITY OF GOD


I'm in love with the list i just created