Year One – Review

There is no denying Harold Ramis. As a director he gave us Caddyshack, National Lampoon’s Vacation, and Groundhog Day. As an actor he was in Ghostbusters and the sequel, but as a writer he gave us Meatballs, Analyze This, Stripes, Caddyshack, so I hope you see that the no denying part is the fact that he’s been involved with some pretty funny films, films that are still funny to this day. So seeing him back as a writer/director for the first time in seven years should get one excited for Year One. It’s also produced by the new funny man, Judd Apatow, and stars Michael Cera, Jack Black, Bill Hader, David Cross, Paul Rudd, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. This looks like it could be one of the funniest films this year, but ends up being one of the laziest, unfunny comedies you’ll see this year. Definitely.The film is a hog-posh of ideas, none that were fleshed out, and everything felt like it was just some buddies playing around with the costume department’s stuff, and someone filmed it. Trying to be Monty Python, the film feels like a lazy way of doing another Caveman. Having Jack Black and Michael Cera do their shtick in caveman times should be pretty funny enough, with plenty of areas to mine for comedy gold. They go from caveman times to oddly, early Biblical times, and make unfunny jokes when they see people like Cain and Abel, the city of Sodom, and the Romans. I’m okay rolling with the incredible historical inaccuracies but the film rarely provides jokes that a common person off the street would make. If borad humor was the goal, they need to go farther with it. Everything is played to close-to-the-chest. The film literally makes my man-crush Paul Rudd unfunny. How does something like that happen?

On the flip side, someone like Oliver Platt is funny. He looks like he’s having fun as his High Priest character. Huh? Platt is funnier than Rudd? This is the weirdness that Year One is. The Cain (Cross) and Abel (Rudd) bit is the absolutely the worst comedy thing I’ve seen is quite a long time. Maybe it’s just not meant to be joked about? The humor is lazy, a term one should never, ever use when describing a comedy movie. Let us laugh, it’s what we paid for, but Year One is giving it to us. I can admit a few chuckles escaped me. It’s not totally devoid of some minor fun, but the film meanders aimlessly. It goes on from one scene to the next, sometimes damning continuity, trying to find a rhythm or a laugh. There are stretches of jokes that fall flat, and I mean flat as a soda left out of the refrigerator for like a million years. Even when something is sort of funny, it’s very observational. This laziness has to be blamed squarely on Harold Ramis. I hate to say that, because I’ve read that Roger Ebert says Ramis is one of the nicest person you’ll meet in Hollywood. I’m sorry, I don’t really mean to beat him down with this negative review of how unfunny the film is, but it is unfunny and your dollar is important more now days. These things happen from time to time, a comedian is no longer funny. Some call it quits, others reinvent their routine. Ramis better get his act together for Ghostbuster III, otherwise we’re the ones doomed.

Jack Black does his thing, so does Cera, the McLovin’ dude shows up, and we have Year One. Completely devoid of real humor, an astonishingly limp script, it feels like those anti-funny dudes from Disaster Movie did this thing, not Harold Ramis. A shame. Just go watch Caveman again.

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