In Theaters: June 19, 2009

Harold Ramis’ new comedy is 2009’s version of The Love Guru

Year One
Directed by Harold Ramis
Starring Jack Black, Michael Cera, Oliver Platt, Hank Azaria
*1/2

I’m on record as not being a big admirer of The Hangover, but I have to concede that Year One makes Todd Phillips’ overrated, overhyped box-office smash look like the funniest movie ever made.  It’s hard to believe that Harold Ramis—the man who has written, directed and acted in such generation defining comedies as Caddyshack, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day—could produce such a lame, lazy, laugh-free film.  The Chicago-born comedy icon has certainly produced his fair share of disappointments in the past (think Bedazzled and Multiplicity) but even those movies had sparks of wit and invention.  Year One just lies there onscreen, noticeably devoid of any energy or enthusiasm either in front of or behind the camera.

Ramis has said that he was inspired by such comedies as Monty Python’s Life of Brian but the movies that I kept thinking of while watching Year One were Mel Brooks’ late-career efforts like Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead and Loving It.  Those films had the musty feel of an aging comic desperately trying to prove he still knew how to make ‘em laugh, but could barely get anyone to crack a smile.  The audience at the Year One press screening greeted Ramis’ film with a similarly unenthused response; for much of the movie, you could barely hear a pin drop in the theater and that’s the last response you want from a comedy.

So what went wrong?  The problems start with the film’s basic premise, which clearly owes a sizeable debt to Life of Brian.  The key difference is that the Monty Python guys based their film around a brilliant idea—what if an ordinary guy born the exact same day as Jesus Christ accidentally became worshipped as a messiah?  Year One has a far less clever conceit; as scripted by Ramis and his co-writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (who are currently penning the long-awaited Ghostbusters 3), this is basically a pre-historic version of a typical road comedy, in which a mismatched pair of buddies (played here by Jack Black and Michael Cera) goes on a cross-country trip, encountering a series of oddballs (played by instantly recognizable faces) along the way.  Because of the film’s quasi-biblical setting, many of these oddballs happen to be ripped directly from the pages of the Good Book.  So you’ve got Paul Rudd and David Cross turning up as battling brothers Cain and Abel (with Ramis himself playing their daddy Adam) and Hank Azaria and Christopher Mintz-Plasse as the original dysfunctional father and son Abraham and Isaac.  At least Cera and Black don’t have to worry about doing right by God’s chosen people; I’m no theologian, but I’m pretty sure the Bible doesn’t feature a pair of wisecracking hunter-gatherers named Zed (Black) and Oh (Cera), who are kicked out of their tribe for general incompetence.

Individually, Cera and Black can be very funny actors, so it’s understandable that Ramis thought it would be an interesting experiment to cast them opposite each other.  And maybe with better material they could have made their odd-couple routine work.  As it is though, they never seem entirely comfortable sharing the same frame.  Black’s wild-man schtick demands a co-star that can keep up with his energy level (that’s why his best role remains School of Rock, where he got to lead a group of overstimulated elementary schoolers) , while Cera’s deadpan delivery works best when he’s matched with someone equally skilled at verbal sparring, like, say, Juno’s Ellen Page.  All too often, the actors seem to be carefully taking turns delivering their lines instead of mixing it up and riffing off each other in the moment.  The supporting cast doesn’t fare any better, as usually reliable scene-stealers like Rudd, Cross and Oliver Platt (who plays a priest with a predeliction for young, nubile boys) are somehow unable to generate a single chuckle.  It’s dispiritng to watch such a talented cast flail about under the gaze of a director whose mind is clearly somewhere else.  One gets the sense that, for Ramis, making Year One was work, not fun.  And that’s never the kind of environment that’s going to produce a good comedy.

Verdict: Skip It

Click here to read Harold Ramis talk about the making of Year One