judd apatow's KNOCKED UP (2007)

after Rock Hunter so impressed me, it's nice to see a contemporary comedy with a little respect for its audience, and for the medium. Knocked Up is heavier and looser than Apatow's The 40-Year Old Virgin, but the somewhat lower concept serves his honest, character-driven humor fabulously; it's exhilirating to see a film unleash such relentless howlers without stooping to the contrivance (and mean-spiritedness) that taints so much mainstream comedy. (there's some pop culture humor that may or may not date well, but it stems from the characters, and where their conversations and in-jokes might believably stray, as opposed the reference-fest dreck of "Family Guy" or, say, the Shrek movies.) but Knocked Up is in essence as much a relationship drama as a bawdy romantic comedy, and Apatow's keen verisimilitude proves just as strong an asset on the serious side of things - undoubtedly the key to his strengths as a humorist. the two couples at the center of the film are painfully sharp sketches of both the politics of modern romance and the precipitous psychological divide between men and women, and each character is written with a careful emotional intelligence. a lot of recent screen humor has trended toward the exaggeratedly uncomfortable comedy of errors, but with Knocked Up Judd Apatow outdoes the best of them not only in sheer laughs, but also, and more profoundly, in a spirit of fearless insight.