Knocked Up. Directed (And Written) by Judd Apatow. Music, It S Worth Noting, by Loudon

Knocked Up. Directed (and written) by Judd Apatow. Music, it’s worth noting, by Loudon Wainwright III (Remember him? “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road”? Apparently became a citizen after that… but not done with dead skunks, alas). Starring Katherine Heigl (woof! …but she’d better fetch up with representation before the next one), Paul Rudd (the straight guy from “Clueless” and who appears to be stuck in straight guy mode, poor schlub), Seth Rogen, some other doomed youth of the gink persuasion, roundup of usual suspects from the Mall.

Another cinematic paean (variously pronounced) to sloth and imbecility, notable first for its particularly vulgar take on pregnancy and parenthood at a moment when these things turn out to be tragic as often as joyous for young people; notable also since Apatow, the auteur (French for “guy with a vision so delicate, so sensitive, so subtle that nobody but he his own self could possible bring it to the screen… or else nobody with any class is willing to…”) has just disencumbered himself of yet another brainchild, this one called “Superbad,”yet another plunge into teen idiocy, tumescence, humiliation, vulgarity, despair (might check out “Spanking the Monkey” or “Tadpole” for these things tackled more cleverly), so the guy’s evidently persuaded some lowbrow suit(s) in Hollywood that he’s “only, like, the next Martin Score-seize” (“Singles”) and gonna do it again. Score-cease might be better.

Goes like this. Ben Stone (Rogen, shapeless, colorless, pasty and unredeemed by any kind of emotive agility) is a slacker and—worse—a Canadian one: fat, sloppy, indifferent, lazy, unambitious, lubricious of course, and living on the rapidly-dwindling proceeds of a lawsuit occasioned by some even bigger bonehead hits him with a car (and doesn’t finish the job). He hangs with a gaggle of co-slackers, at whom we’re invited to teehee, because the pointless life of post-teens is so rare as to be laughable (try the Galleria on Saturday night… you’ll die laughing, Mom): misshapen, ill-kempt, deluded, and unappetizing, the gang bends its occasional energies feverishly if none too efficiently upon the construction of a skin-cataloguing cinee-mah website: You want to catch Barbara Bach’s wahwah? Kim Basinger’s little whoozies out in the air? HalleBerry’s butt bathed in a pearlescent sheen of perspiration? Or—worst case—Jack Nicholson’s (yeeeee-uw)? Just punch into Skin.com(or something) and reference your favorite. We’re fiercely engaged in accumulating the documentation for this noble contribution to the Family of Man when somebody clues us into the already-existing “Mr. Skin’s Skincyclopedia” and website (somewhat embarrassingly, I actually own a copy of the former: Anybody know, for instance, that early in her career a down-on-her-luckBarbra Streisand starredal fresco in a little known below-the-border hit, “Manuela acaba de acabar con su burrito”? You can look it up.). Aw, shucks. So, like, guess, we need a new life’s work. Come up with it first thing next week. Week after for sure…

Meanwhile, Allison (Heigl, fiercely chaste, freshly laundered, straight white toothed, butt would stop a clock… and if you don’t believe me, just Google ™ “Mr. Skin. Katherine Heigl, poor thing, is among the poster girls for the site) Scott is a bright, driven, ambitious hustler of a television lackey, only this very day promoted to “executive” something-or-other and off with her sister to the local singles place to celebrate, but gotta be back home by nine on account of busy day tomorrow the kind of serious girl Allison is. Fate determines that the sister gets called home even earlier, though, and that Allison, awash in whatever kind of sissy drink they serve in singles places, bumps into Ben whom, sober, she’d never look at (the kind of sissy they serve in singles places). What with this and that, she takes him home this night of all nights where she makes another decision which, sober, she’d never make: to umph umph his little umph umph without any intervening umphety umph. Next day, when the ugly reality of the night’s incongruitudinous consanguinitude dawns with the dawn, and the two kids separate tearlessly never (they hope) to see one another again.

Comes now the chuckle part. Sister and the husband aren’t getting along. Tee hee! Bouncer at the singles club delivers a homily to sister on the hopelessness of aging floozies. Urf urf! Allison fetches up pregnant. Mmmph! At loose ends, she retrieves the father to announce that she’s having the baby. Mercifully we get no pontificating (even more mercifully: no humor)about you-know-what: “…rhymes with contortion.” A busy, engaged, committed, ferociously competitive career-woman just poof! …like that decides to have a baby and put her life on hold. Hey! I’ll believe it if you will. Anyhow. Imminent birth throws the unlikely pair (slacker, hustler) together for lots of yucks as they settle into an awkward symbiosis to await the blessed arrival. If you guessed that the seriosity of fatherhood impels the lout into a change of life or that his discovery of inner depth wrings from the dedicated Allison a grudging respect for nonhackers, you peeked (and if you peeked but didn’t yawn, go rent any Disney flick from past ten years).

Somehow we’re invited to admire a virtueless, self-indulgent slob, to pity a self-absorbed Anglo princess, to giggle at the destiny of little Farnsworth, born to this couple and putatively the instrument of their redemption… likely at the expense of his own. Urf.

By the way, we get to see Heigl’s wahwah (or somebody’s… they mighta got a stunt one… talk about your bad part time jobs!) during a way-too-long birthing scene. Don’t get caught with a mouthful of Gummybears ™ when that happens...