Year One

Biblical history receives a brain-dead makeover in the idiotic comedy Year One, which marks a disappointing creative collapse for director Harold Ramis. Once upon a time, Ramis was a big name in comedy, having directed such 80s classics as Caddyshack and National Lampoon's Vacation. He even branched out into acting, starring as Egon in the Ghostbusters movies. For a while there, it was pretty easy to like Ramis. But with Year One, Ramis the director proves he has completely lost whatever talent he once possessed.

Everything about his direction is flaccid and confused, the result of a veteran devolving into an amateur. The laughs are awkwardly timed, the pacing is uncomfortably uneven, and the majority of the actors seem content to phone in their performances. Year One is not the work of a master showing off his skills, but rather the work of someone who seems yet to grasp the concept of a motion picture.

This movie is such a curious failure that it seems as though the movie's inability to stay focused and funny is part of a larger joke that we are not invited to hear. I can see Ramis now, hiding behind the curtain and counting all the money he managed to swindle out of unsuspecting moviegoers. But then again, Year One has not been anything close to a box office success (its domestic gross is still sitting at a mere $38 million after a few weeks in theatres), so perhaps the joke is on him.

But as bad as Ramis's direction is, the movie's failure as a piece of comedic entertainment is not entirely his fault. The script by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (whose day jobs have them on the writing staff of the hit television show The Office) is a clumsy mess that consistently ruins the optimistic possibilities of the concept. And perhaps that is the most disappointing aspect of this movie. While the core comedic idea has genuine potential, the movie sidesteps any attempt to unearth something truly inspired.

Jack Black and Michael Cera star as Zed and Oh, two forest-dwelling Neanderthals who stumble through a whole series of misadventures that spoof events from the Old Testament. There are plenty opportunities to view history through a contemporary and humorous lens, but each reference and joke comes and goes with little more than a whimper. Black and Cera are just recycling their usual shticks, but at least the pair of performers have enough charm and commitment to make the most of what they are given.

As awful as Year One is, the movie's two stars deserve credit for trying to elicit some laughs. Black's rock-star attitude and Cera's dead-pan delivery offer a couple moments worth chuckling at, but it's tough to conjure up much laughter for a movie filled with gags that surround such scatological nonsense as the perils of peeing in your own face and the questionable importance of eating someone else's feces.

Black and Cera are aided in their efforts to make us laugh by supporting players like David Cross (Arrested Development), Paul Rudd (Knocked Up, I Love You, Man), and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (who played cult classic character McLovin in Superbad). But amazingly, each of these talented performers are given absolutely nothing to do. Rudd is barely on screen at all, which might explain the lack of laughs coming from his character (he's the soon-to-be-bludgeoned-to-death Abel), but Cross (who plays the soon-to-be-fratricidal murderer Cain) has infinitely more time to parade around in front of the camera. Even then, Cross does nothing with nothing, which makes me question the purpose of casting a funny actor if that actor serves no comedic purpose in the finished product.

Year One is just another flop in a string of disappointing 2009 comedies. Compared to some of the other movies that have failed to give me much to laugh about this year, this comedy falls somewhere in the middle. It is not entertaining enough to best the half-baked I Love You, Man, but it does offer a few mild chuckles, which puts it above the aggravating Land of the Lost. At times, Year One is so scatterbrained, so completely moronic, that I almost felt sorry for the people involved. But a comedy movie that fails on the comedy front is something that misses the point entirely. With funny actors and a once-talented director joining forces to provide the laughs, Year One has a lot going for it on paper. But somewhere between page and screen, this idea has turned rotten and we're left with a limp effort that is more interested in wasting time and money than in making us laugh.