Knocking the "Values" of Knocked Up

Playing call and response with misguided critical voices isn't my favorite pastime, but there was something about Variety editor Peter Bart's recent critique of Knocked Up on The Huffington Post that inspired my fingers to march across the keyboard. In his piece, Bart attempts to parse the purported "values" of the low-budget, R-rated comedy from writer/director Judd Apatow, which had a $30 million opening last weekend.

"Knocked Up will clearly be the sleeper hit of the summer, but one question still nags at me: Is Knocked Up so downright hilarious that we should overlook the fact that its story is, well, fucked up?" Bart writes. "Are we so 'values driven' that we're prepared to overlook the fact that the 'values' of this film defy credibility?"

Bart seems to have a hard time getting his mind around the idea that a beautiful, career girl (played by Katherine Heigl) would have a baby after a one-night stand with a shlubby slacker/stoner (Seth Rogen) results in a pregnancy (ie., why didn't she just get an abortion). Even stranger, he contends, is that she asks him to participate in the pregnancy and the life of their child.

"To be sure, the guy instantly commits to be the Perfect Father and to embrace the values of Eisenhower America," Bart writes. "And no one around him dares allude to alternate means of dealing with an unexpected pregnancy. In this sector of slackerdom, apparently, the 'a' word is banished -- one of the stoner dudes finally alludes to 'a word that rhymes with shmashmortion.' All this represents a Judd Apatow syndrome -- Apatow's the writer-director of Knocked Up. Like a Victorian novelist, Apatow loves to put Virtue at Risk, then turning potentially complex characters into thoroughly conventional cop-outs."

Both liberal and conservative pundits have been yapping about this issue for a few days (I think we can all agree that part of Apatow's talent is grafting a certain moral structure onto the gross-out comedy). But here's my problem with Bart's post: the Rogen character doesn't instantly commit to fatherhood, as Bart suggests. He wants to but can't because he's selfish, lazy and insecure. He struggles with fatherhood and that's essentially the conflict of the movie. It's a comedic coming-of-age tale about a young couple who grow into adulthood by loving something more than themselves. Bart thinks the story suffers as "a thoroughly sentimental excercise." Maybe. But I think the reason why Apatow's comedies connect with audiences is because they hear a heart beat in that sentimentality. And while Knocked Up has many problems as a film, "credibility" is low on that list. Why? Because movies sometimes require something called suspension of disbelief. In my opinion, Bart needs to stop staring at the ventriloquist's mouth and start listening to the jokes.

But hell, enough with the Ebert and Roeper act. The Hollywood Reporter's Gregg Kilday hipped me to this deleted scene from the movie that's up on YouTube (I'd love to hear Bart explain the "values" of this exchange between Heigl and actor Jonah Hill). Enjoy.