Katherine Heigl plays the up-and-coming star of E! television, a
totally professional go-getter with a sunny disposition and a
sympathetic personality. On the night following a big promotion, she
goes out to celebrate and really enjoys hanging out with a lovable
slacker who makes her laugh. She enjoys it so much that she ends up
pregnant, and makes the decision to keep the baby. Her impending
motherhood prompts her to get acquainted with the flabby slacker (Seth
Rogan) who has fathered her imminent child.
The film combines rom-com sentimentality with a raunchy
youth-comedy sensibility. The film's auteur is Judd Apatow, who also wrote and directed The 40-Year-Old Virgin,
and has brought a fresh take on raunchy R-rated youth-oriented comedies.
Two elements unique to the genre:
1) There are no evil, larger-than-life antagonists: no Beulah Ballbricker, no Porky, no Dean Wormer, no bullying jocks, no snooty
rich pricks. The essence of the dramatic conflict, such as it is,
derives from inside characters who are trying to evolve while they adjust to one
another, experiencing the customary fits and starts of human
relationships. In order to triumph, the main characters have to
overcome something inside themselves, not some stereotypical symbol of
oppression.
2) The women are fully-rounded characters. In the traditional mold
for the raunchy comedy, the women are restricted to certain roles: (a)
the flawless virginal girl-next-door (b) the controlling bitch (c)
the object of sexual lust whose personality is irrelevant. Apatow's women have strengths and
weaknesses and seem like real people. If there is any weakness to his
approach to female characters it's that the women don't get an
equal share of the zingers. Of course that reflects life to some extent, but the
stories are still constricted by the exclusively male point of
view. The factor which made the dialogue in When Harry Met Sally so effective is that
it was co-written by a man and a woman, with each providing dialogue
and a suitable spin on the characters of the writer's own gender. Apatow
is moving in a good direction, but should pull a funny woman, someone
like Sarah Silverman, into his circle.
Many people have questioned whether the hot, brainy career woman
would even give the aimless stoner an opportunity to come into her
life solely on the basis of his entrenched DNA, but that situation
does follow logically from these characters. One of the most
interesting things about this film is that it's not afraid to
challenge society's notions of winners and losers. Although Heigl is
the responsible and successful one of the romantic pairing, she has
paid a steep price for her success. She has no friends, no boyfriend,
and absolutely no life at all outside of the walls of the E! studio.
She doesn't quite live in her parents' basement, but it's close - she
lives in her sister's guest house. Rogan, on the other hand,
basks in the camaraderie of a male bonding group. His friends live in
their own place, and really seem to enjoy their lives. They may not be
grown-ups, and they may not have ambition, but the reason they haven't
"moved on" is that they are satisfied with what they have. So which
one of the romantic couple is the loser? The answer to that is not as
clear as it first seems to be, and it's easy to understand why Heigl
might find it appealing to kick back with a sincere guy who has
genuine friends, just as Rogan might enjoy the chance to clean up now
and again. Each of them has something to offer the other, and that
makes their pairing plausible.
Between those complexities and the marriage of Heigl's sister and
brother-in-law, this film has a lot of complex subtext for a raunchy
comedy.
