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| Editorial Reviews: |
|  |  | | Two lazy cavemen are banished from their village and head out on their own to form a new tribe, and along the way they encounter Biblical figures and | | | Director Harold Ramis leans away from the Groundhog Day side of his personality and toward the Caddyshack side with Year One, a broad comedy set in more-or-less ancient times. The film's cockeyed timeline puts two wandering cavemen (Jack Black and Michael Cera) through a rapid-fire series of biblical events: Cain (David Cross) slaying Abel (Paul Rudd), Abraham (Hank Azaria) preparing to smite his son Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and everybody converging on Sodom, the Genesis equivalent of Las Vegas. The jokes range from droll religious references to Apatow-ready testicular gags, but almost all of the real humor comes from the efforts of the performers to put things across. Black and Cera couldn't be more different in their styles, but each manages to conjure up some laughs just by working in his particular vein: one can appreciate Black's exuberant extrovert pouncing all over the material like a needy Golden Retriever and also savor Cera's muttering wallflower as he flicks in his sidelong observations. Azaria and Oliver Platt are given very long leashes--they know what to do with that kind of room--and Ramis himself plays a mighty-bearded Adam, but it's all not quite enough to prevent Year One from falling into that hard-luck zone with Caveman and Wholly Moses: one more comedy that suggests the ancient world wasn't really all that funny. --Robert Horton
Stills from Year One (Click for larger image) | |
| Custom Reviews: | |
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| | Ridiculous as it is, this might be the funniest movie I've ever seen in terms of laughs per minute. Sure, it's dumb - but it's supposed to be. It doesn't pretend to be anything other than a silly farce made strictly for s***s and giggles, and there are plenty of giggles here. With a cast that includes Jack Black, Hank Azaria, and relatively unknown (to me, anyway) but incredibly funny comedian David Cross as Cain, how could it not be? I don't get how anyone could watch this and not laugh. Loved it!
| | | There were about 3 chuckle moments in the last third of the movie and that was it. When I see movies like this, I have to wonder what happens at the internal reviews and the test showings. Where did they get enough people who laughed at this train wreak and who decided it was good enough to produce, release and market.
Bad, just bad.
| | Humor that lives in the Stone Age | |
| | Jack Black is pretty funny most of the time, but not in this film, which seems to have actors just playing their usual shticks. The comic gags seem to miss the mark more times than not or are petty and juvenile. Michael Cera pretty much acts exactly like he does in every other movie he's been in (see Juno, Superbad, etc). Jack Black has been able to actually "act" in certain films, and get into various characters and still give his own personality to a role (School of Rock comes to mind), but this one he kind of just mails in and plays what he knows best, being overbearingly obnoxious without any restraint.
After Jack Black's character is banished from the village after eating from the Tree of Knowledge, he and Michael Cera stumble around as cavemen during prehistoric times and encounter several religious figures and events (Cain, Abel, Abraham). There is an attempt to satirize and lampoon these events, such as Cain killing Abel, but the humor doesn't really work and seems a little awkward or just not funny.
As one reviewer noted, it is amazing that someone could mess up a comedy about two cavemen wandering around, but they've found a way to do it. Watch the trailer, and leave it at that.
Pretty much a waste here.
1 ½ stars
| | One funny scene and that's it | |
| | Have you ever watched a movie where the only good scenes in the movie were the exact ones in the trailer? That's what happened with Year One.
The only funny scene in this movie is when Michael Cera's character asks to adjust his helmet and announces he forgot his sword. That same clip was on the trailer, which I laughed at, and was the reason I even saw this movie. I assumed the rest of the movie would be just as funny.
But it wasn't. First of all, I don't think Jack Black is funny. I think he tries too hard to be silly and goofy and it doesn't do anything for me.
Michael Cera's mumbling, awkward adolescent act worked on the show "Arrested Development", but it wasn't enough to save a bad script.
So, besides that one funny scene, the rest of the movie was a bore.
| | Religious Satire that could have accomplished more | |
| | I had high hopes for this movie. At first, it looks like it's all about prehistoric man and cavemen, but then as the two guys go forth, they find Bible-level technology (Ancient Greece/Persia/Rome/Israel), though the history in here is inaccurate in some parts, and I'm a little foggy on whether this 'Year One' refers to Year One CE/1 CE or just Year One in the course of recorded/written history or some such.
I liked the message at the end that was like, man should try for their own destiny rather than letting some unseen god decide it for them, and pokes fun at violent religious sacrifices like the command that more virgins were to be sacrificed despite the fact that virgin sacrifices before hadn't worked for them, and the debate that Oh had with the priest about the Holy of Holies was also amusing and thought-provoking. I feel that this movie was produced with the best efforts of some people, but it doesn't seem that they all came quite together as a team (particularly, producers and writers - not the actors, which I felt were good) to make a movie that felt disjointed and confusing, but at least better than the movie 10,000 BC.
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