Year One a Comedy Zero
Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera) are two cavemen who have left their tribe to explore the world, not so much out of choice but more because neither of them was all that wanted anymore. During their travels they discover a quickly advancing world, making it all the way to Sodom (which is just outside of Gomorrah) to find the loves of their lives Eema (Juno Temple) and Maya (June Diane Raphael) have been taken prisoner and sold into slavery.
Jack Black and Michael Cera try to ride things out in Columbia Pictures' Year One
You know what? I’m going to stop right there. Not so much because I don’t want to spoil anything but more because I just don’t have the energy to dig into all the absurdity the new Harold Ramis (The Ice Harvest, Analyze This) comedy Year One desperately tries to unleash. This film is a like a series of poor “Saturday Night Live” and “SCTV” skits strung together one after the other to feature length, and while one hits the target every now and then the majority lie so painfully flat all I could do sitting in the theater was shrug my shoulders and sigh.
Truth be told, comedies like this are pretty much always a bad idea. People may say they adore Mel Brooks’ The History of the World Part I, but how many of them actually watch it on a routine basis? Or how about that 1981 winner Caveman starring a young Dennis Quaid and bizarrely (if maybe appropriately) cast Ringo Starr? Thrown that DVD into the player lately? From Wholly Moses to – yes, I’m going to say it – Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life comedies like this generally don't work, and even if they offer up a funny idea or two the rest of the running time usually proves to be nothing less than a head-scratching bore.
That’s exactly what happens here. Sure Black and Cera have great comedic timing, tell me something I didn’t know, but that doesn’t matter a lick if the lines they’re asked to say and the scenarios they’re put in or almost entirely without merit. The film goes nowhere of interest, doesn’t seem to understand its own concept and can’t decide who its actual audience is, most of the time spinning in circles desperately searching for a reason to exist that does not exist.
Listen, it’s better than Will Ferrell’s heinous and abhorrent Land of the Lost, so I guess that’s a plus. Also, I think David Cross has a couple of funny lines that are pretty great. Additionally, I got quite a kick out of Hank Azaria’s Abraham (you know, the guy God told to sacrifice his son Isaac – played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse – on an altar), if only because his accent was so freakish and bizarre just listening to him mangle so many syllables in a row couldn’t help but bring a smile to my face.
Not that it really matters. This is a weirdly awful movie that, while not exactly hard to watch, is pointless and altogether boring. It’s hard to imagine that Ramis is the same man who directed certifiable classics like Caddyshack and Groundhog Day, the inventive, imaginative touch he had helming those seemingly lost in a cacophony of bad ideas and even worse execution. Year One may not be a disaster, but it is a waste, and in my mind I can’t quite figure out how one is any better than the other.
Film Rating: ê1/2 (out of 4)
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