Word: cera
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...known only by the names of cities they come from or hope to get to. They also represent four types familiar from other genres. Columbus, for example, is your standard teen-nerd hero. Played by Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale) with a confidence that proves Michael Cera does not have a copyright on bright, inward, fretful, sexually underemployed young men, Columbus locks himself in his room, safe from all contact, human and other. So the sudden, desperate door-banging of the hot chick from the next apartment (Amber Heard) is the knock of both opportunity and apocalypse...
...near the top, here was a winner that won't be overturned in the recount. It earned $34.1 million, according to early studio estimates, and beat out the second-place finisher, The Hangover, by more than $7 million, and the weekend's other new movie, the Jack Black-Michael Cera prehistoric comedy Year One, by about $14 million. Bullock's first No. 1 movie in a decade (since Forces of Nature), it nearly doubled her previous personal-best opening (the 2007 Premonition, at $17.6 million...
...success is measured only in how much your movie needs you, Cera has reached the peak of his career to date with Year One, a comedy set in biblical times. By playing once again the sweet, stammering smart guy, although this time in a Spinal Tap wig and caveman furs, Cera can't stop Year One from being a bad movie, but he does save it from being a catastrophe. He plays Oh, an inept gatherer who is best friends with an even more inept hunter named Zed (Jack Black). They're kicked out of their village - the wisest...
...Cera and a few of the bit players to try to make us laugh. The funnier (the superlative is not appropriate) scenes involve Hank Azaria as Abraham, who attempts a group circumcision on Zed, Oh and his son Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). "Trust me," he tells them. "It's going to be a very sleek look." Abraham is down on Sodom, as you can imagine, but that's where Zed and Oh are bound (there's a subplot revolving around rescuing the women they love from slavery). They meet up - again - with Cain (he's a running joke...
...Oliver Platt, in more eye makeup than Liza Minnelli) who has his eye on Oh and even a sheep joke. Vulgarity can be a dazzlingly pleasurable thing in comedy. But there's something very sad about Year One's vulgarity. It's desperate. The movie is one long snigger. Cera is the only aspect of it that doesn't feel graceless and defeated. "I'm just minding my own business," he seems to say. "Doing my thing." It might be one-note, but at least it's in the key of funny...