Critic's Diss

Year One
Director: Harold Ramis
Screenwriter: Harold Ramis
Cast: Jack Black, Michael Cera, Oliver Platt, David Cross, Hank Azaria
Release Date: 2009-06-24
Rated: PG-13
Genre: Comedy
Our Rating: 2.00
It’s no secret that Harold Ramis’s Year One is little more than a Jack Black and Michael Cera delivery system. Unfortunately, lovable as both these guys are, they’ve been delivered in much better packages. Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera) are two not-very-successful members of a tribe of hunter-gatherers living back in early biblical times. After eating from the Tree of Knowledge, Zed is banished from the village. On his way out, he accidentally sets fire to Oh’s house, forcing Oh to leave with him. The two bumble out into the world where they bump into lots of guys from the Old Testament. David Cross is Caine to Paul Rudd’s Abel. Hank Azaria makes a lot of circumcision jokes as Abraham. Christopher “McLoven” Mintz-Plasse plays a totally killable Isaac. All the while Black does lots of the crazy eyebrow thing, the wiggly hands thing, and the pretending-something-repulsive-is-sexy thing. And Cera is all adorable blushes, over-long-sentences, his eyebrows fixed in a permanent earnest upside-down-V. But a bunch of funny people in a movie does not a funny movie make. Despite a couple genuinely ha-ha-for-real moments, the majority of the jokes in here feel like they were written by a team of Popsicle sticks and Bazooka gum wrappers supervised by a drunken frat boy. Gay jokes, foreskin jokes, fat jokes, eunuch jokes, and sodomy jokes (they go to Sodom and Gomorrah, after all) abound. There’s an already dated feeling Obama joke. Oh, and at one point Jack Black eats poo. If you’re a 12 year-old at the mall and you’ve finished your Cinnabon and you have two hours to kill before your mom comes to get you, by all means go see this movie. But anyone who has to pay for an adult ticket should probably wait for the next time they’re sick after the movie is released on DVD. If you’re hopped up on fever, it’ll probably seem much funnier.