While this movie is truly crass when it wants to be, it’s also more naive and charming than most others of the crass-comedy genre. I’m not a fan of outright crassness for comedic purposes, but when it manages to lend itself to other comedic outlets within the film, it can work. I wouldn’t recommend this movie to most of the people I know, as it would easily offend them. Then again, most any of the recent films involving Judd Apatow and/or Seth Rogen would do the same.

Writing: Supposedly, Seth Rogen has been trying to get this movie made for quite a few years. I can imagine it to be a hard sell to the studios, particularly without making changes to some of the scenes and details. I also imagine that it became much easier after the success of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and the also-in-production Knocked Up. The 2 main characters are pretty well written, though I considered Jonah Hill’s character of Seth to be a bit too nasty and grating from time to time. On that note, it’s amusing that the two main characters are named Seth & Evan, surely comparative to the two writers, Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg. The funniest characters in the film, however, are the two keystone cops played by Rogen and Bill Hader. They get 75% of the funniest material in the movie.

Production: What can be said about low-budget comedy film productions? It’s not like they have to be overly stylized or slickly produced. Nothing stood out as particularly great or particularly bad. Some of the 70’s retro throwback is kinda fun, most notably in the music choices.

Cast: Casting is generally good. Jonah Hill can get a bit annoying at times, but pulls off much of the roll. Michael Cera is more fun in the poor hapless victim role in the middle of these insane characters. Newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse is a hoot as ultra-lame Fogell. Seth Rogen & Bill Hader are hilarious as officers Slater & Michaels. Other cast members do a pretty good job. However, the one who elevated this movie from a 7 to an 8 in my book is Emma Stone. Having recently liked her work on the criminally short-lived Fox series Drive, it took me a bit to figure out where I recognized her from. She lends a sense of weight and instant respectability to her smaller role in the movie. How her character could possibly end up with the lead character of Seth is beyond me…

Music: Like I said, the choices of source music are amusing, in their retro way. Lyle Workman, who has worked on previous Apatow projects, does a workable job with scoring duties. Not a heck of a lot to accomplish with the score to a film like this, but it’s workable.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 1:48 am and is filed under Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.