Year One is a movie that Mel Brooks would have made. Fortunately, he never got around to it as he had much better things to do, like making comedies that are funny. Year One, like many other comedies, commits the cardinal sin of not providing the laughter but it also goes the distance in its undeniable incompleteness.
To sum up the story, we are quickly introduced to cavemen Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera). They speak like us, and they live in primitive huts of sticks. Zed and Oh are oddly aware of their condition and before long they trek into the outside world. There, they are met with several Biblical references as they attempt to free their perspective girlfriends from slavery.
It’s clear to see that the concept for this film was made out of one sentence and little effort to form a movie was taken after that. It’s as simple as a think tank stating that it would be funny to have Jack Black and Michael Cera as cavemen and have them speak in today’s slang. The beginning is a send up on the hunter and gather lifestyle. After that, they embark on finding clichés which were rejected from History of the World: Part 1. Credit to Oliver Platt for really going the extra mile as an unrecognizable high priest, while others appear for the sake of cashing in. For example, “McLovin” himself Christopher Mintz-Plasse appears for no relevant reason and is one of several characters who casually enters and exits the film for convenience’s sake. Olivia Wilde even makes an appearance as a princess who eats up screen time with no justification.
Black has some appeal, but I prefer him in supporting roles. However, I remain perplexed by the popularity of Cera. Not since John Wayne has someone appeared in cinema with a one-note persona and achieved this level of success. Like Wayne, Cera is a personality, not an actor. However there are as different as they are the same. You booked Wayne when you wanted a man’s man. You book Cera when you want a wimpy dweeb. Cera unlike, Wayne makes for a far less appealing personality. He enters a scene and proceeds to stumble through it with all the grace of a limping sloth. I highly doubt his lines ever reached paper.
Most disappointing is the reliance on gross-out humor. There are maybe three big sequences which rely on gagging the audience. That may seem like a low number, but when faced with prolonged, misguided, boring gags, it’s the foul ones that stick with you. The worst offender was Oh relieving himself while shackled to a wall upside down. Talk about leaving a bad taste your mouth.
Directed by Harold Ramis, the man I like to think of as the inventor among the Ghostbusters, this is far from his well-received films. That’s not to say that Groundhog Day was considered brilliant in its day; its legacy has grown with time. I doubt that eons from now, anyone will recall Year One. *½
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