Word: apatow
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Another way of saying this is that he film's central reversal - Ben and Alison getting to know, and like, one another after their first hasty but consequential encounter - is rendered plausible by Apatow's shrewd observations of the people in their lives. Indeed, one of the real pleasures of this movie is derived from the fact that Apatow writes his minor characters - a TV host, a wardrobe mistress, a slyly envious production executive - with the same care and wit as he does his major figures...
...course of pregnancy runs no smoother than the course of true love, and Apatow's obstetrical observations - yes, natural childbirth devotees may well call for painkillers when labor becomes more intense than advertised - are shrewd and edgy. And Alison's hormonally induced moodiness, as well as Ben's slouching progress toward grown-up status, are craftily presented. But for all his hipness and Hollywood hotness, Apatow is, at heart, a square. He clearly believes in marriage, family, bourgeois dutifulness. Maybe his movie is a little repetitive, but that's a negligible price to pay for the careful blending of wildness...
...rights, Judd Apatow should be a terrible filmmaker. His movies largely feature his friends and family, which is usually an invitation to lazy inside-joking. His subjects tend to be none-too-bright slackers and losers, which always carries with it the possibility of tiresome indulgence. OK, they're kinda dumb, but, really, isn't there something adorable in their stupidity? The fact is, however, Apatow, represents, for the moment at least, the best in American movie comedy. The 40 Year-Old Virgin somehow made rather touching and funny sense out of that eponymous condition and its protagonist's recovery...
...movie premise, it's about as simple as they come. What transforms it into something quite wonderful to see is that Apatow, unlike those teams that fashion comedies for the young and retarded, is a real writer - one with something on his mind other than barf jokes and public flatulence (though he includes a few such moments here). He knows how to write funny, "he said, she said" jokes. More important, he's a tender observer of ordinary life. Think of him, perhaps, as a throwback to the kind of screenwriters who created the classic romantic comedies of the 1930s...
...after one season, Rogen didn't get many auditions. "It didn't bother me very much. I didn't think I'd ever be an actor," says Rogen. "I thought I was going to be a writer." All the time, like some sort of '70s-movie kung-fu master, Apatow was coming up with ridiculous writing tests for Rogen and Goldberg to pass: turn an idea of his into a movie in 10 days (even though nothing was going to happen at the end of 10 days); come up with 100 one-page-long ideas for movies (they...