Knocked Up

Judd Apatow was the writer/director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which I thought was dandy, and this one is, too. There are no plot surprises, it goes pretty much as you would expect it to go, but the way it gets there is all the charm. Apatow seems to like nerds—we heard him interviewed on NPR and he seems a bit of a nerd himself—and he likes the nerd to get the girl. Lee had a bit of trouble believing this particular slacker man-boy would ever attract a woman like this one, and I think that’s probably true, and a problem a lot of women would have with the story. Several female reviewers did. But most cut the movie some slack, because after all, we’ve all seen odd couples, wondered “What do they see in each other?” It can happen, is all I’m saying, and it’s a harmless fantasy of guys like me who have never had women falling all over them to think that they could win the love of a smart and gorgeous woman like Katherine Heigl … and the key word is earn. She likes him at first—he’s funny, though pudgy and an obvious loser—but they both know he’s got a lot of growing up to do. He doesn’t know how, but the impetus of an unexpected and unwanted pregnancy gives him the needed shove. Will this marriage last? Who knows? I wouldn’t take odds on it. But lasting is not what the movie’s about. That’s another movie.