Movie Review - Year One

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Year One, starring Jack Black and Michael Cera, features the welcome return of a former comedic archetype: the brave coward.  Bob Hope is probably the most famous practitioner of this role.  He became legendary playing cowards thrust into dangerous situations being forced to feign valor.  He perfected the role in films like The Ghost Breakers, Caught in the Draft, My Favorite Blonde and The Paleface.  It’s a character he would play well into his 90s.  While many comedians added their own touch, Woody Allen (not coincidentally, a huge Bob Hope fan) famously updated the role by adding neurosis.  By the early ‘70s, the character was pretty played out.  So when the Saturday Night Live crowd invaded cinemas, their jettisoning of the character revolutionized screen comedy.  Gone was the “brave coward;” in his place was the “cocky outsider.”  Bill Murray, Chevy Chase and John Belushi rocketed to stardom playing variations of this character.

It’s Cera who revives the “brave coward” in the role of Oh.  Oh and Zed (Jack Black) are cavemen too civilized to function in their primitive world.  Their couth (lack of uncouth?) gets them kicked out of their village.  From there they wander aimless through various stories from the Old Testament.  Year One will undoubtedly draw a lot of comparisons: History of the World: Part I and Life of Brian come to mind.  But I’d like to point your attention to the criminally underrated Love And Death, written by and starring Woody Allen.  Both films feature characters forced to be brave in spite of themselves while poking fun at a famous book.  Even some Woody Allen fans have avoided Love And Death, presumably because its stated subject matter is that of a parody of Russian novels.  But enjoying the film no more requires having read Russian novels than enjoying Airplane! requires having seen Airport ’77. 

Now, all that being said, Year One is far cry from any of the films I’ve mentioned so far.  The humor ranges from the scatological (boo) to the anthropological (hooray) but the film has a certain lazy charm about it.  Cera’s always fun to watch and has a nice chemistry with Black.  His reserved nature and subtle delivery compliments Black’s more boisterous persona.  Jack Black is typically too manic for my liking.  But being paired with Cera not only keeps Black’s mania in check, it allows Cera to get laughs by reacting.

Directed by Harold Ramis, the film is full of scenes that simply stop.  Early on, Oh and Zed fight a snake.  I can only assume that no humorous resolution could be found so Ramis just cuts to the next scene.  There’s not even a line of dialogue to explain that they escaped let alone how they escaped.   Similarly, no explanation is ever given when the film transitions from what appears to be a cavemen movie into a biblical parody.  And, apparently the filmmakers believe that virtually every incident in the Old Testament took place during the same three-day period.

Year One is a sloppy movie.  It’s virtually the textbook definition of “scattershot”.  But it’s briskly paced, and there are laughs to be found.  However, most of those laughs come in the form of small asides.  When the film reaches for big, humorous set pieces, it repeatedly fails. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Love & Death and 1 being Caveman, Year One gets a 6.

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