"Knocked Up" Follow-Up

While out of town on my mini-vacation over the past few days I managed to get to the theater to catch Judd Apatow's Knocked Up. I had high hopes for the film and it didn't disappoint. I mentioned in my last post before I left how impressed I was with the film's soundtrack featuring new music from Loudon Wainwright III. While Wainwright's tunes weren't featured as prominently in the movie as I had anticipated (although there was good use of one of my favorite Bright Eyes songs "We Are Nowhere and It's Now"), I still enjoyed it thoroughly and thought it was worthy of dedicating a post to. The movie is flat-out hilarious, due in no small part to a talented cast, which includes much of the personnel from Apatow's late '90's ill-fated, cult-favorite series Freaks and Geeks, as well as Jonah Hill (40 Year Old Virgin, Accepted) and of course comic side character extraordinaire Paul Rudd, who steals scenes just about every other scene he's in. I got the feeling, while watching the film, that many of the funnier parts of the dialog were ad-libbed, especially the scenes featuring only Rudd and star Seth Rogen. These scenes recalled the duo's previous moments of improvised hilarity such as the "You know how I know you're gay?" conversation in 40 Year Old Virgin. These two clearly have a great rapport, but the fact that so much of the funnier parts of the movie seemed like spur-the-moment ad-libs isn't a knock against Judd Apatow at all. If anything, it's a monument to smart casting. If you hire actors that are naturally funny, you're movie is probably going to be at least somewhat comedic. The best examples of that notion probably take place in Jim Carey's movies (well, the ones that are actually funny, at least). They say that the funniest parts of most Jim Carey films take place after the scripted dialog is already over and they just let the cameras run to see what he's going to do (my personal favorite instance is the line "No way! We landed on the moon!" from Dumb and Dumber, which was completely unscripted). Anyway, the point is that Knocked Up is by far the funniest film I've seen in quite a while, and the fact that it follows nearly none of the trends of this summer's movie offerings (low budget, no huge stars, not a crappy sequel), makes it all the more refreshing.