That right there's a good movie. Possibly not as funny as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but close, and almost certainly the better film. Where the-40-Year-Old Virgin took, in reality, male relationships as its subject, Knocked Up focuses on male maturation. The pregnancy, the friends, the shrewish sister and her oddly detached husband -- they're all vehicles to explore that odd transition from a life wherein your strongest attachments are with close friends, to one where your primary companions are your wife and family. Oh yeah, and it's really funny. A mushroom trip involving five different types of chairs and a dressdown from a surprisingly sensitive bouncer are particularly classic moments.
I also agree with much of Amanda's review. The early efforts of folks on both the Right and the Left to brand the movie pro-life were discomfiting. Some in my group seemed genuinely distressed that the main character didn't choose an abortion, and were ready to write off the film for that initial bit of betrayal. I found that baffling.
The flick is pro-choice in the most literal sense of the term. Katherine Heigl's character receives advice in both directions, and then makes a decision -- a decision the audience may very well conclude is the wrong one. But she has a choice; nothing is forced on her, and the most explicit scene on abortion features an eloquent speech by her mother advising her to end the pregnancy because, at this point, she's not ready, and these are not the right circumstances. Heigl, it turns out, disagrees, but that's a perfectly allowable, and indeed respectable, decision within the choice framework. I was, like Brian, disappointed in the movie for making things work out so perfectly (her pregnancy actually ends up aiding her job), but that was a minor sin, and one more attributable to the conventions of romantic comedies than any rightwing agenda. In any case, a good movie, and one that I'd happily see a second time. It's far more fun than the substantive commentary here would suggest.
