Directed and co-written by Harold Ramis, Year One carries a lot of heavy weight when it comes to comedic talent from the top down. The main protagonists of the story are two outcast cavemen named Zed and Oh played by Jack Black and Michael Cera, two comedic actors that couldn’t be operating any further from each other on the spectrum. Cera brings his usual dry and reserved flavor while Black not so much acts out his part as he shouts it out in what makes the film appear to be more of a stage rehearsal than an actual movie.
Scenes are framed lazily and jokes are strung out so long they go from mildly humorous to intensely annoying. The introduction of David Cross and Paul Rudd as Cain and Abel was a stroke of genius casting, but the scene feels like a “Saturday Night Live” skit in which the two actors were asked to improvise until they got it right… They never did. As Zed and Oh journey further outside their forest dwellings they find themselves meeting more and more historical figures in something of a Bible’s greatest hits using the book of Genesis as its muse even though this is hardly operating as any kind of dedicated storytelling.
The story leads Zed and Oh to Sodom and along the way they encounter Abraham (Hank Azaria) and Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), have to deal with the introduction of circumcision and the sacrificing of virgins all while going through so many wardrobe changes you wonder why no one was around to do their hair — a concept that could have actually benefit this stinker.
Harold Ramis is the comedy writer and director everyone's cribbed from, from Sandler to Apatow. After leaving "Second City TV," Ramis went on to write, direct, and occasionally star in comedic touchstones like Animal House, Caddyshack, Stripes, Groundhog Day, and of course, Ghostbusters, which have starred a slew of loveable losers fighting to get their sh*t together in the army, on the golf course, or in the middle of a war with supernatural beings. After taking a few years off, Ramis is taking it back to the beginning with this summer's Year One, which stars Jack Black and Michael Cera as loveable loser cavemen who, when Black's Zed accidentally burns down the village, find themselves in the middle of a very familiar holy war. Read on and find out what the big daddy of buddy movies had to say about evolution and self-improvement, male full frontal nudity and the lack thereof, and what the heck is up with Ghostbusters 3.
Watch Year One (2009) Online: Part 1, Part 2
