Word: rogen
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...Which number made Hollywood happier? The second, because the budget of the Judd Apatow comedy was also in the $30 million range, about a tenth that of Pirates. And as word of mouth goosed Knocked Up's weekday grosses past Pirates, the film also certified its leading man, Seth Rogen, as a new comedy star. First law of movie economics: an action epic costs buckets to make; a comedy, peanuts...
...enough: an early profile in TIME about its barely known star, very enthusiastic reviews, and an opening box office weekend that outperformed analysts' estimates. Knocked Up, a comedy about a young career woman (Katherine Heigl) who finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand with a chubby stoner (Seth Rogen), finished its first three days at $30.7 million - which happened to be, almost exactly, the movie's very modest budget. That number was enough to make the film a sturdy second last weekend to the mega-threequel Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which took in $44.2 million...
...Rogen's Ben Stone, he lives with a bunch of dopers so louche they make him seem almost normal. Yes, Ben's friends are descendants of Cheech & Chong and Bill & Ted; but they go back even further, to the all-male enclave inhabited by Gary Cooper and his professorial pals in the 1941 Ball of Fire. Both groups were involved in compiling a reference work: an encyclopedia from the Ball of Fire scholars and, from Ben's housemates, a scheme for a website that will itemize the nude scenes of movie actresses. This is an idea so perfect...
...previous film as writer-director, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, was supposed to be about how a nice fellow who'd never managed to have sex triumphs over the prodding and baiting of his jerky friends (including Rogen and Rudd) and finds a compatible mate. But The Girl (Catherine Keener) was hardly a character at all; her only function was to unleash a hearty laugh whenever Carell passed a joke. Alison, granted, is more prominent and complicated here. But for all the lip service Apatow pays to the guy-gal plot of Knocked Up, he invests much more energy...
...Unlike some of this movie's skeptics, I don't mind Rogen. He has sweet eyes, a voice too deep and rich for his age and, in his one nude scene (Heigl doesn't get one, as Mr. Skin will tell you, except for a gynecological closeup late in the film) a cute tush. But by Hollywood beauty standards, he's so on the lower side of ordinary, he almost doesn't belong in movies. That's one good thing about Apatow: he subverts the medium's inherent aesthetic fascism - survival of the cutest - and puts funny people center-screen...