Stone-age comedy neither drags knuckles nor invents the wheel

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Michael Cera, left, and Jack Black are a PETA supporter's worst nightmare. (COLUMBIA PICTURES)

This oft-clever comedy from Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day) conjoins the caveman movie and the biblical epic, with primitive characters speaking in contemporary idiom.

When this kind of thing goes wrong, you might end up with laugh-free dreck along the lines of Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part One. But when it works well, it can yield a satiric comedy masterpiece along the lines of Life of Brian.

It is a profound relief that Year One more closely resembles the latter than the former. In fact, Life of Brian is the obvious template for the movie.

Jack Black brings his rockin' slacker persona to Zed, a primitive tribesman exiled from the village after taking a bite of the forbidden fruit on the edge of town. ("It tastes knowledge-y.")

He is accompanied by the unimpressive Oh (Michael Cera, playing essentially the same sweet-natured doofus he played in Juno, only with a fright wig). Oh lusts after Zed's hot sister Eema (Juno Temple), and is thoroughly demoralized that, in a village of around 60 people, she doesn't know he exists. (Where the manly villagers are hunters, Oh is, like Eema, a gatherer, compelling Oh to observe that Eema may be "a self-loathing gatherer.")

Their wanderings place the twosome smack in the middle of some bible stories, including Cain and Abel (David Cross plays Cain as a quasi-pyschopath with anger-management issues). Most hilariously, the two interrupt a religious-fanatical Abraham (Hank Azaria) as he prepares to sacrifice his son Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse -- yep, that's right, "McLovin" from Superbad) and get included in Abraham's great notion that circumcision constitutes a worthy sacrifice to God.

This segment is as close as the movie gets to the comic subversion of Life of Brian, wherein the atheistic Monty Python troupe aimed darts at Christian religious dogma.

But Year One doesn't quite have the courage of Monty Python's convictions: the movie suddenly transforms into a parody of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto as the boys gain entrance to Sodom and try to save their fellow villagers from slavery and/or human sacrifice, courtesy of a grossly debauched High Priest (Oliver Platt) given to demanding oil massages from the nubile innocent Oh.

If Ramis and co-scriptwriters Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg don't aim high enough in their satiric take on religion, they don't entirely succumb to Mel Brooks-style shtick either, fart and poop jokes notwithstanding.

Year One may not be a classic for all time -- but it's not a waste of time, either.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Other voices

Selected excerpts from reviews of Year One.

Platt, more than anyone, is the soul of the movie, because he makes even the most primitive perversity sound... well, civilized.

-- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

Just because the picture's setting is ancient doesn't mean the humour has to be, too.

-- Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

Year One makes Will Ferrell's Land of the Lost look like a masterpiece.

-- David Stratton, At the Movies

An amiable stroll through biblical times... Year One lacks seismic guffaws but elicits many mild smiles.

-- Ronnie Scheib, Variety

Has its moments -- especially Black and Cera's knockabout pairing -- but Year One sidesteps greatness by allowing too much filler and swill to plug the gaps.

-- Hilton Thomas, Empire magazine

Just like the stunt fudge on which Black chows down in his signature scene, Year One is unmistakably crap.

-- Leigh Paatch, Herald Sun (Australia)

-- Compiled by Shane Minkin

 Movie Review

Year One

Starring Jack Black and Michael Cera

Grant Park, Polo Park, St. Vital.

14A

Three and a half stars out of five

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 19, 2009 D5