There are definitely parts of "Knocked Up" that are romantic. And it is more often than not funny. But I wouldn't really call it a romantic comedy, partially because it doesn't romanticize anything. Things for the two main characters, Ben, played by soon-to-be-the-biggest-comic actor-around Seth Rogen, and Alison, played by so-hot-you-don't-recognize-her-comic-chops-right-away Katherine Heigl, are simply damn difficult. Sure, good things happen here and there, and there are some uplifting moments, but if there's one big message to be taken from "Knocked Up," it's that having a kid is fucking tough.

There are screaming matches in public places. There's a lack of money. There's the example of Alison's sister, Debbie, and her husband, who have become a screeching nag and a whimpering semi-loser who lies about going to a relatively innocuous activity, respectively. And then there's simply the overwhelming question of, "How the hell do we raise this kid anyway?"

But rather than beat the audience over the head with those questions (or definitively trying to answer them) writer and director Judd Apatow simply presents Alison and Ben's story in an altogether realistic fashion. As an audience, because we're so removed from it, it's hilarious. To them, it's hell. They're both wrong sometimes. And they both act kind of crazy or irrational. But that's part of what makes the realistic characters. And we know that, even if things end happily, there's still going to be rough patches.

I'm not one to deride the good qualities of a ridiculous, silly comedy full of non-sequiturs. Those can be utterly great. But it seems to me that "Knocked Up" is what a comedy ought to be. It addresses something that real people go through -- one of the biggest life changes there is -- and it does so with warmth and heart in addition to some raunchy, filthy laughs, much in the same way Apatow's "40-Year-Old Virgin" did.

But "Knocked Up" is better than "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," not only because the main characters are more realistically formed (the idea of a geeky guy who never really leapt into adulthood is sort of a cliche), but also because Apatow seems to have perfected the comic-relief-within-a-comedy formula of having the male lead's best friends come in at just the right moments to lighten up what could be some very intense and stressful scenes. "Knocked Up's" running gags about a bet between two of Ben's friends in which one of them can't shave or get his hair cut never exhausts itself of laugh lines.

I have some complaints about the movie, but they're relatively minor. Mainly they're that Alison's bosses at E! should probably have been meaner, that Ben was just a little too much of a great guy in the end and that Alison was just a little too smoking hot not to have gone out and found a really rich dude to be her sugar daddy.

But hey, suspension of disbelief. I mean, in the real world Dane Cook gets to make out with Jessica Alba onscreen, so really, what's realistic these days? A-.

Note: Never do a Google image search for "Knocked Up" with Safesearch turned off. Yowza.
Double note: Fellow CRACKED blogger Peter Lynn has posted some highly informative updates and trivia about the movie here.

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