But why can’t it just be the opinions of the characters in the movie? There are people who have moral problems with abortion, and I’m not at all surprised that a hippie like Ben’s friend would be one of them.
I thought it was very funny but totally unbelievable. I just never bought that someone as beautiful and successful as Heigl’s character would want to work so hard at trying to believe in Rogen’s character. As a result I detected zero on-screen chemistry between them.
I also thought it was about 20 minutes too long and could have benefitted from losing the Las Vegas trip in it’s entirety. Though that would have deprived us of the hilarious chair evaluation scene.
I think I laughed hardest when Rudd’s character observes Rogen leaving Heigl’s guest house early in the morning and tells his youngest daughter not to do that when she grows up (let guys like Rogen sleep over) and the little girls says, “I’m doin’ it.” But I’m an absolute sucker for cute kids saying funny things that are beyond their years.
Very funny movie. Despite my misgivings, I’d recommend it.
It can be. But the point is that it’s always tiptoed around. Almost every single time. In the real world, Allison would likely be getting an abortion; it was slightly unbelievable to me that she didn’t. And really unbelievable to me that it was just glossed over the way it was.
I could buy that she goes for him eventually, he has a certain charm. What I didn’t buy was that just because she’s pregnant, they have to be boyfriend/girlfriend. That was way too easy.
All in all, a funny movie, but not a perfect movie.
How was Ben the bad guy in that situation? Allison is basically hiding his existence from her friends. (And how do you know those girls weren’t Allison’s friends?) Ben doesn’t know that he’s her dirty little secret, and talks openly about how they’re having a kid. She’s only humiliated in that scene because she’s exposed as being with a “loser” like Ben.
As for Allison not experiencing growth, I disagree with you. At the beginning of the film, she’s basically a leech on her sister and brother-in-law. She’s living at their house, eating their food, and pretty much depending on them for everything, including (as you note) her social life. By the end of the film, much like Ben, she’s become a fully functional adult, who is not dependent on her big sister for everything. Plus, she’s no longer humiliated by having people know she’s dating Ben, which is also a significant maturation on her part.
There were two characters who favor abortion in the movie: Allison’s mom, and Ben’s other friend, who coined the term, “shmabortion.” Which he does to mock the pro-life guy.
I’d rather we not pretend that the movie attempt to examine the moral implications of abortion at all, or that it came to any sort of conclusion on the subject, either pro- or con-.
OK, we’ve established that abortion is the likely outcome of this, were it real life. But it’s not real life, and for this particular movie to work, and solely because of that, they can not have an abortion. So why would they dwell on it? The longer they talk about shmashmortion, the longer the audience has to realize, “She should get an abortion. Why isn’t she getting an abortion? I’d get an abortion. Why isn’t she getting an abortion?”
Not mentioning abortion at all would be very distracting, since we all know it’s an option. Dwelling on it would be stupid, since it points out that the writers are fudging it for the sake of making a movie. So they made a nod to it and went on with the show.
As my roommate says in these situation, “88 miles per hour, dude.”
I agree- I thought she went from “What a drugged-out loser” to “Hey, this guy might be a real catch” way too quickly. It seemed like she made a conscious decision to do so, which is pretty ridiculous.
A very good and extremely funny movie, even if some of the plot points - Allison keeping her pregnancy a secret, the porn site stuff - weren’t believable. Hey, it had a sex scene set to Rock Lobster, how does it not get some thumbs up for that?
I don’t remember every bit of that conversation, but I figured he found her lies embarrassing, which was reasonable even if his comments weren’t.
As a guy about the same age as Ben, I found his reactions and excitement about fatherhood very realistic. I feel the same ways he does at various points, - imagine most guys my age do - my emotions shifted with his at times. That’s what I really like about 40 Year Old Virgin and about this movie. Apatow seems to develop much truer characters, and sitting in the theater, I feel like audiences laugh at his movies laugh differently. Maybe that’s a crazy impression, but to my ears, there’s something different.
The whacky stuff was good, too, though. Ben getting high with the aid of a gas mask and doing a Darth Vader impression almost killed me.
Last thing from this all-over-the-map post: my girlfriend and I wanted to see this movie right away, but we ended up putting it off two or three times because we knew it would be an emotional experience. The actress who played Dr. Howard’s nurse - the blonde, curly-haired one who has a few lines with Allison and caps the fight scene with Ben with a comment like “That happens here a lot” - was a very close friend of my girlfriend, and a professional mentor and role model, too. Her name was Stephanie, and she died very suddenly in October. (I was hoping there would be a mention or dedication in the credits and was sorry there was none.) I’m sorry this is the only way I’ll see her work, but I liked her scene a lot and I thought she was funny and did exactly what was needed.
What did you think was unrealistic about that “porn site stuff”?
Do you mean their idea? Because it already exists, as they mentioned in the movie. mister skin dot com. Clearly NSFW.
To random comments in the thread:
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I’ve seen ratios of female-hotness to male-loserness in the proportions presented in the movie. It’s certainly not the norm, but it’s common enough that I didn’t even bat an eyelash at it or think it was unbelievable.
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Do people who think it’s “likely” she’d get an abortion in real life know people who have had unwanted pregnancies in their 30s? You don’t just get pregnant and go, “nah, I’ll just an abortion”. I don’t think I know a person who isn’t “pro-choice”, but most people also have gotten past the notion that having an abortion is an easy decision, especially when she’s got a job, close family, nieces, has finished school.
There’s nothing that struck me as “likely” at all that she’d get one.
I don’t know what kind of experience people are bringing to this movie, but my wife and I discussed what we’d do if she got unwanted preggers, and we did not decide that we would terminate it. I know people who have had to make difficult life decisions (like settling with a loser, or marrying a bitch) because kids came along.
Seems like people are missing the magnitude of getting pregnant.
I think it was unrealistic that they had never heard of Mr. Skin. Or CNDB. Or the Bare Facts. Any single horndog with a modem would be very well aware of all of these sites (and probably a lot more out there I’ve never heard of), so that proved an incredible stretch for me.
When I heard their idea, I was thinking, “Mr. Skin” so I was at least happy they finally referenced it.
I figured they were such stoners and amateurs that it was possible they hadn’t heard of it.
I’m a horndog with a modem, and I was only vaguely aware that such sites existed. I certainly couldn’t have named any of them.
I laughed quite loudly at the first mentioned of Mr Skin. I wish I weren’t the only one in the theater who did.
I do realize this, and vastly oversimplified the thinking while making the point.
What ArchiveGuy said - I had trouble believing they, as apparent porn connoisseurs, hadn’t heard of a really famous site that did the same thing their site was going to do.
I’m not sure what movie you saw, but nobody in Knocked Up got fat.
Wonderful film, btw!
I was referring to the part on the red carpet with Steve Carrell (sp?) where she tells him she looks like a whale. She (and the other people connected with her job) talk a lot about how big she is. Granted, that never showed up in the visuals.
I’m not sure that going from living in her sister’s pool house and having no friends to living in Ben’s apartment and having no friends is a growth arc.
Also, the waiting room was the part that was most off for me. We know Allison has a mother, why wasn’t she there? (Because Joanna Kerns was only paid for one scene, yes, but the movie just ignores her glaring absence.) Even if she thought carrying the baby to term was a bad idea, she would show up in the delivery room for her daughter’s first baby. (There was no indication that she was evil, just not sure that Allison should have a baby now.) Allison never had a baby shower, and has no friends to come wait for her? It was sad.
Joanna Kerns appears again in the final credit sequence and it’s quite likely that Alison wouldn’t have wanted her mother around when she had the baby since she didn’t like the idea of her daughter having the baby to begin with.
I’m still trying to figure out how Ben is getting Alison to his apartment. He says he lives in East L.A., yet is driving north on Pacific Coast Highway toward Malibu.
I know it’s a pretty shot, but it’s really going to take a long time to get to East L.A. that way.
I know what you’re referring to, but just because pregnant women mistakenly and irrationally think they’re getting “fat” (which stems from things such as people on message boards saying things like “she just gets fat and has a baby” which has a mistaken and irrational basis in real-life attitudes), doesn’t mean the weight and girth gained while pregnant has anything to do with being or getting “fat.”
And yes, I wanted to reach through the screen and gently slap some sense into her when she said that. I want to scream whenever I hear a TV/movie character complain about being fat while pregnant. Pregnant women are not fat. Period.
Yes, fat women can be pregnant, and pregnant women can gain a lot of extra weight, but those are different issues.
As I mentioned, I’m pro-life. I saw it with my friend and as we were walking out I said I thought the character would have been likely to get an abortion. My friend (30) said there’s no way she herself would get one now. But when she was 23 and starting out? I don’t believe Heigl’s character was in her 30s. I thought she was supposed to be about the same age as him, and he was 23. She was starting out in her career and hoping for her first big break.
I guess if she was keeping the baby it makes sense to let him know, as he would get hit up for support. But to jump from that to “we’re having a baby **together ** and we might as well try to be a couple” seemed like a stretch.
Hmm? Don’t some people actually gain weight in areas other than their belly, and then keep the weight on? So they do end up heavier than before they had a baby? They may eat more than they normally would to support the baby, and be heavier than before.
None of this is meant to be pejorative.
I groused about that myself. I actually leaned over to my BF and said "If he was really going to East L.A., he wouldn’t be going that way.
Actually, that same gripe pissed me off with Little Miss Sunshine as well. NO WAY was some of that Redondo Beach. GRR
Although I can’t point to anything definitive to back this up, I believe she was supposed to be a few years older. She is in real life and Apatow seems to strive for that sort of minor detail realism. A review or two I’ve read seem to have come to the same conclusion - that she hooked up with a younger guy. It would still only put her in her mid to late twenties and her career trajectory would certainly still be believable ( I doubt you start out fresh from college directing E programs - a few years in the trenches makes sense ).
- Tamerlane