Knocked Up Delivers

So here's the pitch: a movie - passingly anti-abortion but let's not focus on that - that makes pin-up pretty blond Katherine Heigl look, well, ordinary, paired with donut-fit stoner Seth Rogen. Oh, yeah, and Paul Rudd, that old softy - he'll play the prick. Boffo, right?

But when was the last time you got choked up in a movie? Spiderman 3, Shrek the Third, Pirates? I'm an unrepentant Die Hard fan and whatever the shortcomings of Live Free or..., I believe in the big action hero on the big screen. But Knocked Up is just as inspiring and often funnier. And unlike Life Free..., I wasn't being tickled to death by gags.

For those of you reading (both of you) who are swearing a blue streak because you spotted Apatow way back - Freaks and Geeks - well carry on swearing. Because for all the cleverness and good writing in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, this is twice as bright and frame-full of warm-blooded people.

Sweet situations:

• Pete (Paul Rudd), the put-upon husband and new friend of Ben Stone (Seth Rogen), gets an ass-chewing at his daughter's first birthday party from Ben for being the guy Allison is afraid he'll become. The wrong guy. Ben walks, and Pete, holding the cake, sings "Happy birthday to you..."

• Rather than resisting Ben, Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) gives herself over to the man as he is. A man, it turns out, who is building a website that enumerates nudity in movies. At his place, she's watching the credits of a movie and she sees girls in a shower. She cries out, "Boobs. In the credits. Bush!" Delightful and unexpected, since the man is commonly the one who has to come to terms with what the woman cares about. And, unlike cliches of "battle of sexes" setups in which she stores it up as as ammo against him, it's just a step toward acceptance.

• Some moments seem so true and tragicomic that they hardly need the movie to exist but they'd be a throwaway line in a novel, and lost in a sitcom. Pete, talking about all the pent up tension in his marriage. "Our biggest problem is that she wants to spend more time with me. That's our biggest problem."

• And over dinner, when Pete and Ben trade lines from Back to the Future, they form an immediate bond that implies the hours of affection and lethargy committed to watching and re-watching the movie. Jealous of their connection, Debbie stabs at them with, "Hey, I have a really good idea. Why don't the two of you get into your time machine, go back in time and fuck each other?" Ben responds, "Who needs a time machine?"

That is the source of this movie's charm: Ben gives voice to emotions, not directly and on the nose, but with a shrug of "hell yeah, I feel that way." It turns out he has heart, not heroism or courage or the strength to kill his narcissism. In fact, the sequence in which he changes his life from slack to responsible is over without fanfare almost as soon as it begins.

It's a pleasure to reflect on this movie. You don't find yourself thinking about the craft or the scenes. Instead you note the light touch and richness of situations that Apatow's created in the very unreal world of comedy. If you're up to it, it will pose the question, "What the heck do we want and do we have to frustrate each other?" Not you and me. You and your wife, lover, boyfriend, FITB [fill in the blank]. Though there are many "refrigerator moments" - Katherine Heigl can't do better than Rogen? Even on a good day? - I'm willing to forgive this crew the lot of them.

Borat, or Who Cares?

Finally saw Borat. I settled in expecting to be embarrassed. And to laugh my ass off.

Embarrassing? Let's see. Americans hold jingoistic political views? Shocking! Homophobes? Misogynists? Xenophobes in denial? You don't say? Not "embarrassing" but a case of, "So what else is new?"

I was impelled to see this movie because of reviews that had critics squirming in a puddle of collusion. This guy is hilarious, they said, about things that shouldn't be hilarious - the black kids in Atlanta talk and dress, uh, "urban." D'uh! But when Borat gets them to coach him how to do it, it gets him thrown out of a hotel lobby. Before he registers. So....that means....we like our "urban" out there, arms length, on TV, and black. Yes. Outrageous! So...that means...uh, black people...they have a culture...that nice hotels don't like to see. Wow! Let me just deal with that for a moment. Relax, all you professors and journalists. American cultural criticism hasn't been co-opted by this fictional Kazakh.

So what the heck did the people that drove it to $250M in grosses love? Idiot id. It's a fart in church, which come to think of it is a missed opportunity, given the straight way they played the Pentecostal segment. It expresses the repressed, with a story line. I don't mean we're all anti-semites or think the other guy is. I mean that it's hard not to tiptoe through a garden of individual sensitivities in this late century. And Borat has big feet.

What Borat spends most of his time on is the flip side of network television. He shows us we're different. Americans aren't similar, admirable, don't exemplify the land of the free and home of the brave. We're fragmented, fractured, and intolerant. We're siloed with people like ourselves and pity or condescend to Borat and others who aren't like us. We're none of the things we say we are. Maybe the only thing we share is the pursuit of happiness. And get the hell out of my way.

Here are some clever features of the movie:

• The search for Pamela Anderson. Very American and aimed right at the audience demographic. They made perfect use of the famous Tommy Lee video to dash Borat's romantic dream.
• The prostitute with a heart of gold, to whom he returns in a trope on the Hollywood movie chestnut we know too well, that love is staring you in face but your blind and twisted heart can't see it.
• The underplayed sight gag of the bear's head on a plate in Azamat's refrigerator.
• The reunion of Borat and Azamat, now incognito as Charlie Chaplin, on Hollywood Boulevard.
• Crazy risks for small-scale entertainment: the national anthem, the naked ballroom wrestling, the dinner down south, bagging Pamela Anderson. This is the kind of stuff that gets people beat up by private security, or bruised and booked by local police. For all of you who laughed 'til you peed, he earned it. From the rest of us, I say, "Jesus, but a desperate man will do anything to get a break."

When Borat ended, I flipped to Comedy Central and caught the Colbert Report. And for the first time that evening, I laughed out loud.