Knocked Up and Idiocracy

At the risk of being hunted down by fans of “Knocked Up” like Frankenstein fleeing angry villagers armed with pitchforks, I have to state that this is the worst “comedy” I have seen since “Little Miss Sunshine,” another over-hyped piece of garbage. As was the case with “Little Miss Sunshine,” I could not bear watching more than 15 or 20 minutes. If there is ever an armed uprising in the US against the capitalist system and I am drafted into leading a guerrilla detachment, my only fear of being captured is not being waterboarded but being forced to watch these two movies over and over again.

Seth Rogen: seriously unfunny

Some of the main characters in “Knocked Up” are a group of male “slacker” roommates, who spend all their time watching stupid television shows and smoking pot. Now it is possible to make a good comedy about such people, as Richard Linklater’s 1991 gem “Slacker” would indicate. But director Judd Apatow, also responsible for the execrable “Forty Year Old Virgin” with the terminally ungifted Steve Carrell in the title role, has about as much flair for making his characters interesting as early 1960s Hollywood had with “beatniks.” Apatow’s characters are entirely one-dimensional. They are defined by their bad habits, their utter lack of self-awareness and their puerility. That this film has become a big hit with America’s young, the demographic group that Hollywood dotes on, is a sad commentary on the tastes and intelligence of a nation in decline.

While most critics acknowledged that it was implausible that Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl), a stunningly beautiful and upwardly mobile television personality, would have sex with a slob like Ben Stone (played by Seth Rogen), let alone decide to have his baby, they all found the movie “hilarious”. Typical was the NY Times review:

In this case the buoyant hilarity never feels weighed down by moral earnestness, even though the film’s ethical sincerity is rarely in doubt. The writing is quick and sharp, and the jokes skitter past, vanishing almost before you can catch them. Rather than toggle back and forth, sitcom-style, between laughter and tears, Mr. Apatow lingers in his scenes long enough to show that what is funny can also be sad and vice versa.

“Knocked Up” made me smile and wince; it made me laugh and almost cry. Above all it made me happy.

Keep in mind of course that this newspaper of record also put people like Judith Miller and A.M. Rosenthal on its payroll.

Despite its MTV ‘tude, “Knocked Up” boils down to a defense of “family values.” In 2005, “Just Like Heaven,” another romantic comedy, was a veiled defense of keeping Terri Schiavo on the feeding tube with its attractive female lead in a coma. Now we have “right to life” at the opposite end of the life-cycle. As difficult as it is to imagine an ambitious and reasonably intelligent woman like Allison Scott going to bed with a slob like Ben Stone, it is even far more difficult to imagine her having his baby.

Apparently I am not the only person on earth who had not been suckered into raving over “Knocked Up.” In a Guardian article  by the shrewd American critic and humorist Joe Queenan dated September 4, 2007, no prisoners are taken:

Rogen’s fantasy ceases to be stereotypically joyous when Heigl discovers that she is pregnant. Amazingly, neither party ever seriously considers the highly attractive option of abortion, which may be a sign that the anti-abortion movement is gathering strength in Hollywood, or may simply result from a realisation that abortion makes a poor subject for a comedy (puking and watching women on the toilet is fine, though). Or it may simply be a sign that feminism is dead. The film now moves in an excruciatingly predictable direction, as Rogen gradually realises that he will have to shape up and do the right thing and be a do-right-man for his do-right, if somewhat dim, woman. Along the way, there are a lot of jokes about bodily functions, a lot of dialogue that is explicitly contemptuous of women, and a lot of profanity. This is a film for teenage boys who dream of growing up to be teenage men…

Where is all this leading? It’s leading to a future so dark that women will look back on the decade that brought them The Runaway Bride, Notting Hill, My Best Friend’s Wedding and My Big Fat Greek Wedding as a golden age. Infatuated by Apatow’s success, Hollywood has turned over the keys to the industry to the 40-year-old producer/director/screenwriter, whose upcoming projects include a film about high-school losers (Superbad), a film about a stoner who witnesses a murder (The Pineapple Express), a film about a sad little man who just broke up with his girlfriend (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), and a film about a Mossad agent who fakes his own death so that he can become a hair stylist. Thus, the situation today is very much like back in the days when John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase and the rest of the Saturday Night Live alumni turned out third-rate movies faster than anyone could possibly see them, and dominated screen comedy until Robin Williams came along to make things worse.

Anyone out there who finds Apatow’s films amateurish, derivative, juvenile and offensive to women is simply out of luck. Like the satanic alumni of Saturday Night Live, Apatow and his posse never stop working, everything they pitch gets enthusiastically greenlighted, and until one of these films bombs, the public is going to be seeing an awful lot of his work. When Apatow made The 40 Year Old Virgin, there was much rejoicing in the land, because people were thrilled that someone was once again making “sophisticated” romantic comedies instead of the usual moronic Adam Sandler fare. Well, Sandler is the star of Apatow’s upcoming Don’t Mess With The Zohan. The dark ages are back. Not that they ever left.

Speaking of the dark ages, I can recommend Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy” with some qualifications. Inspired by Woody Allen’s “Sleeper,” it stars Luke Wilson (a much more tolerable actor than his more famous brother Owen) as Private Joe Bauers, who is a guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program. While the experiment is only supposed to keep him asleep for a year, unforeseen circumstances keep him in a state of hibernation for 500 years.

Mike Judge’s world of 2506 is a lot like today’s world, except even worse. Fed by a diet of stupid television shows and movies like “Knocked Up,” they have forgotten how to read a book and can barely speak. Their language is a mixture of grunts, slacker style “ya knows” and locker room profanity–both from men and women. Anybody who is the least bit articulate, including Joe Bauers, is seen as a “faggot”.

Just as is the case in “Sleeper”, Bauers is a threat to the status quo and pursued relentlessly by the cops who are nearly as stupid as they are brutal. When they open fire on Bauers’s getaway car, one cop shoots in the air for no good reason and brings down an airliner. Clearly, Mike Judge had been following the news about law in order in Baghdad, Los Angeles and New York City when he wrote this scene.

Unfortunately, Mike Judge is no Woody Allen (nor is Woody Allen himself any longer) and the film mainly consists of a single joke repeated over and over. It might also be said that Mike Judge wants to have his cake and eat it too. For somebody so obviously appalled by “idiocracy,” Judge had no problems creating “Beevis and Butthead,” an MTV show that basically wallows in stupidity. It is especially problematic in light of how “Idiocracy” represents a 2506 version of MTV’s wildly popular “Jackass” as the typical TV show of the future. Between “Jackass” and “Beevis and Butthead,” the differences are minimal at best.

Mike Judge: a bit too much for 20th Century Fox

Despite his reputation as a money-maker almost equal to Judd Apatow, Mike Judge found himself shafted by Twentieth Century Fox when the film premiered in 2005. There was almost no money allocated for advertising and the movie tanked. Some believe that the anti-corporate message of “Idiocracy” was just a bit too explicit for a studio run by Rupert Murdoch, as reported in the September 8, 2006 Guardian:

There is venomous anti-corporate satire throughout the movie, remarkable mainly because Judge names real corporations. I was astounded – and invigorated – by the sheer vitriol Judge directs at these companies, who surely now regret permitting the use of their licensed trademarks. Like fast-food giant Carl’s Jr, which in 2006 sells 6,000-calorie burgers the size of dictionaries under the slogan, “Don’t Bother Me, I’m Eating”. In Idiocracy, this has devolved into “Fuck You! I’m Eating!” And every commercial transaction has been sexualised: at Starbucks you can get coffee plus a handjob (or a “full body” latte).

Idiocracy isn’t a masterpiece – Fox seems to have stiffed Judge on money at every stage – but it’s endlessly funny, and my friends and I will be repeating certain lines for months (especially while eating), a sure sign of a cult hit. And word got out fast: I saw it last Saturday in a half-empty house. Two days later, same place, same show – packed-out. There’s an audience for this movie, but its natural demographic barely knows it’s out there.

Behind the movie’s satire lie long-term social changes like the stupidisation of the American electorate over 30 years through deliberate underfunding of public education, the corporate takeover of every area of public and private life, and the tendency of the media – particularly Fox News – to substitute anti-intellectual rage and partisan division for reasoned public debate.

Some will argue that Fox has also given us some of the best television of the last 15 years – true – and that if quality sells as well as garbage, then the bottom line is served either way.

So why was Idiocracy dumped? Perhaps because it taps a growing anti-corporate mood in the nation; perhaps because it expertly satirises the jingoistic self-absorption that now passes for public culture. Or perhaps because more people are sick of the modern America that Fox energetically helped to build than the Fox corporation itself is ready to admit.