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Boys, sadly, will be boys

Peter Pan Syndrome runs amuck in Knocked Up
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 3rd, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
A fatal natal day. Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen are knocked for a loop.
Knocked Up

Directed by Judd Apatow
With Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Harold Ramis, Alan Tudyk and Kristin Wiig

As a representative of the Dude, Where’s My Bong genre, Knocked Up is a strangely conservative film. While it relishes the stoned-geek culture of unlimited weed and television, it also attempts to praise adult male responsibility (that is, as “adult” as one can possibly be without fully forsaking one’s innate immaturity) while clinging to tired gender shtick like mommy’s apron hem.
After she hits the clubs to celebrate her job promotion at E! Entertainment Television, Alison (Katherine Heigl) wakes to find a genial schlub, Ben (Seth Rogen) in her bed. Her disgust at her drunken carelessness is only matched by Ben’s physical unsuitability as a bedmate. Though barely able to camouflage her feelings about the situation, the statuesque blonde kindly agrees to accompany Ben out for breakfast.
Alison, naturally, can’t wait to escape this charade of pleasantry, especially after Ben returns to their table at a diner to regale her with the account of his vomiting spree in the men’s room. But, eight weeks later, Alison will be enjoying her own vomiting when she discovers that she has been sown with Ben’s seed.
What happens next is your basic geek (as well as moralist) masturbation fantasy. Alison, the beautiful, talented TV celebrity-interviewer, rings Ben to tell him the news, and decides to embark on establishing a relationship with the overweight, pot-dulled lout.
That abortion is raised and dismissed is perfectly reasonable. But why would Alison be equally opposed to becoming a single mother, especially when she already has a built-in support network established with her sister, Debbie (Leslie Mann)? But this film isn’t really interested in Alison. The women in Knocked Up are basically condemned to heterosexuality. It’s the effect that the promised bundle of joy has on Ben that concerns us, as the prospect of adopting some semblance of maturity knocks him up on the side of the head.
The archetype that Jung labeled as “Puer Aeternus” is far better known by its pop-psych title: Peter Pan Syndrome. Ben inhabits a Neverland with his buddies, an Island of Lost Stoners where days are spent getting high, fighting like ninjas, belching and desultorily building a Web site that tracks the nude scenes of stars in Hollywood films.
These dysfunctional men-boys, anesthetized with pot and fast food, are offered as our heroes, though you can’t help wondering uncharitably whether there isn’t a Middle East conflict that they couldn’t be siphoned off into. They’ll warm to Alison and consider her pregnancy as something shared among them. Their sweaty, socked-in lair will quickly become a Wendy house.
Alison has some qualms about a situation that would lead normal women to dash screaming into the night. Nonetheless, desperate as she is to keep her sprog’s dad, she’s soon to be found scanning B-movies for Ben in hunts for star flesh, fortuitously stumbling on a full-frontal shot at the top of some ’80s epic that falls under the category of “credit bush” in this animal house’s vernacular.
Director Judd Apatow is part of the storied “frat pack” of Hollywood, and is best-known for his last film, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which starred Steve Carell (who pops up in Knocked Up as himself), Mann, Rogen and Paul Rudd, who plays Alison’s sister’s husband, Pete, here.
As with Virgin, Knocked Up is geared for the type of man who never shook off the crown of high-school loser. While a film like Jared Hess’ Napoleon Dynamite offers a protagonist with similar traits, Napoleon is at least still a boy in high school, and so you readily identify with his position on the Darwinian pecking order. It’s far more difficult to engage with men in their 20s who spend their lives perfecting impersonations of Star Wars characters when not farting on each others’ pillows in an attempt at spreading pink eye.
Rogen, an escapee from the feculent You, Me and Dupree, could grow into another John Goodman, though he isn’t quite capable of shouldering a whole film. Heigl is completely wasted here, though the film’s best scenes are the ones with Alison and her E! bosses played by Alan Tudyk and Saturday Night Live’s Kristin Wiig.
Still, can we ever hope for a future where boys won’t be boys, and women won’t be doormats?
 

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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