Year One (D)

Harold Ramis has been writing or directing films like "National Lampoon's Animal House," "Meatballs," "Caddyshack, both "Ghostbusters," and what I feel is his masterpiece, "Groundhog Day." "Year One" is a giant step down, expressing the worst of his now celebrated use of sloppiness and improvisation in an anything-goes, slap-dash attitude.

Jack Black is Zed, a lazy talker, coupled with Michael Cera's bland, throw-away pal Oh. Together they take off to see the world, traveling from one random scene to another - scenes that bear the slightest lift from biblical tales; they experience the encounter between Cain & Able, meet Abraham in the nick of time to save his son Isaac they save him, not God; that's as far as the filmmakers want to go with biblical accuracy), find pleasure in Sodom before its demise, etc., etc. - none of each scene more than a sketch improvised in Saturday Night Live style. Each sketch - excuse me, I mean scene - begins without much formality and is casually dropped when the cast runs out of things to say or do. It's an exasperating device that is only as good as the improve is good, which is not very often.

Harold Raimis, Gene Stupnitsky & Lee Eisenberg scripted this from one of Raimis' original ideas. Raimis directs with occasional spurts of inspiration, but hardly enough; mainly he seems to be sleepwalking through it, sloppiness and all. He, Judd Apatow & Clayton Townsend co-produced.

As I read the credits, I could hardly believe there actually was a script that included written dialog. But the humor - based, as usual on scatological, juvenile nudge-nudge, snick-snickiness is easily recognized as having been the product of the team (including members of the Raimis/Apatow ensemble: Paul Rudd et al). Any fan of their juvenile brand of humor, which includes burlesque-style sexual innuendo, vomiting, breaking wind, plenty of direct reference to genitals, and eating warm poop will love it. For the rest of us it's 97-minutes of excruciating disappointment. more Enjoy, instead, watching once again the Mel Brooks treatment of similar, much better, material in his "History of the World, Part One." Now, that's classic comedy for you.