Interest: Zero

Year One
There are movies that are so bad they’re laughable (like Transformers 2), and then there are movies that are so bad they’re almost painful to sit through. Harold Ramis’ Year One is the latter, which is sadly ironic considering that had it been the former, it would at least have gotten its job done.

Written by Ramis and the scribe team of Gene Stupnitsky/Lee Eisenberg (from TV’s The Office), Year One is a messy example of what happens when a bunch of really talented, really funny people come together to show each other how funny they are, forgetting that the people they’re really meant to entertain aren’t interested in self-congratulatory ego-shining and lazy comedy. Picture a bunch of clowns running around in a circus ring for 97 minutes with no direction or purpose, armed only with hand buzzers and fart jokes – that’s pretty much this movie.

Which isn’t to say there isn’t the occasional laugh to be found; how could there not be. But cheap laughs are especially cheap when they’re served up as fine dining. Year One plays like a gag reel, with one tired joke leading into the next, never building toward or really being a part of anything bigger, or better. In the process, it takes bit comics and beats their routines into the ground, leaving a trail of worn-out “ha ha-s” in its wake.

Take Michael Cera for example: here the straight man to Jack Black’s animated blowhard. His unique, mousy delivery is comic genius, but it plays best off its minimalism – never has it been better than in small doses on TV’s Arrested Development, or as a mirror of teen uncertainty in Superbad or Juno. Year One uses it to prop up a whole damn movie, whittling Cera down to nothing, and finally hanging him upside down and forcing him to pee himself (no joke).

Black, on the other hand, is already an embarrassment. Like Cera, he’s best as comic relief. Unhinged as the leading half of this history-exploring duo, he’s such a bludgeoning force of stupidity that it’s only a relief when he’s not onscreen.

And so it goes, with one comic showing up to do nothing but deliver stupid lines in their own special comic way. Oliver Platt, Paul Rudd, Hank Azaria, David Cross, Christopher Mintz-Plasse – one by one they fall victim to the pointlessness.

But what’s most worrisome here is what’s off screen – rumors of Ghostbuster III, to be written by the same team. Ironically, when watching this disaster I found myself wondering how much better this movie would have been had 80s era Bill Murray been in the Black role. Now I find myself frightened by the prospect of these guys teaming up with Bill Murray circa 2010. Even Murray can’t escape a movie with nothing to say (newsflash – Meatballs sucked).

But then again, surfacing from this crap you can only move up. Updated Summer Blockbuster Smackdown standings:

1. Star Trek
2. The Hangover
3. Up
4. Drag Me To Hell
5. The Taking of Pelham 123
6. Terminator Salvation
7. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
8. Angels & Demons
9. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
10. Year One