Customer Reviews
Understated excellence - By: focada, 25 Jul 2008 
This was an unexpected gem. I expected run-of-the- mill play it for laughs & found instead a stumble through a relationship between a driven woman who beseieged by her hormones decided to keep the baby conceived after a drunken fumble with a well-meaning layabout who turns out to be a kind committed guy who might just be a keeper after alll. Sweet.
Daft plot and great characterisation in a profane battle of the sexes - By: russell clarke, 09 Jul 2008 
Knocked is in some respects not a particularly likeable film. As well as being dramaticallly fantastical it is sexist , crude & in severe need of judicious editing . For an allleged romantic comedy it,s not remotely romantic so the definitive criteria by which it should be judged is , is it funny? Well...i laughed....quite a lot, which is possibly proof of my latent sexism & love of profane banter but what the hell.As Frank Zappa once said you are what you is.
Ben Stone( Seth Rogan) is a sedentary pothead who lives with the mates who are jointly setting up a website -"flesh of the stars.com" - which catalogues nude scenes in movies. Allison Scott( Katherine Heigl) works in television, is ambitious, articulate & attractive , though she lives with her married sister Debbie (Leslie Mann). When she is given her own show to host she celebrates with a night on the town where she meets Ben in a nightclub. They are roaringly drunk & end up having sex back in her room where a simple verbal misunderstanding leads to them doing it unprotected, & well it,s not hard to guess what happens next.
As if the possibility of two such disparate characters engaging in rumpy pumpy does,nt stretch credibility enough( He would naturallly jump at the chance , forgive the pun, but her....) , not that credibility is so much of an issue for this type of film , what transpires is truly unbelievable. In real life Allison wouldn't have anything more to do with anyone like Ben no matter how sweet & cuddly he tried to be but in the la la world of movie land she wants to make a go of it with him. So they couple up , row a lot , falll out big time before the inevitable feel good ending where the bong sucking Ben undergoes a character transformation akin to Hannibal Lecktor becoming a UN peace envoy ( though if Tony Blair can do it)
Having pointed that out it remains for me to point that what Knocked Up is good at is the characterisation. Even if the situations & plot developments feel phoney the characters don't,...they feel real. The dialogue is superbly tart- the easily offended will be .....well easily offended i suppose but the things these people say to each other is the way real people talk to each other. Women may balk at the depiction of them as mostly humorous neurotic harridans though they do get some of the best lines , especiallly Leslie Mann( who in the real world is married to director Judd Apatow , their two daughters play the girls in the film & the eldest gets some great lines) in her scene with a nightclub doorman.
Over two hours is at least 20 minutes too long for this type of material .Whole scenes could have been edited out to no great deleterious effect & it sometimes feels Apatow who wrote the script as well as directing is trying too hard to achieve some measure of profundity beyond the reach of the material. Still it is funny with relaxed empathetic performances, many from Apatow regulars with Rogen particularly outstanding as the immature but curiously likable Ben.
In the end what Knocked Up seems to conclude is that the bonds between men are shalllow but effortless while the bonds between men & women require far more work but when that work is put in are far more rewarding. At least that's the way i saw it, though what it says about the relationships between women is anyone's guess.
Good stuff. - By: Irikefe Okonedo, 08 Jun 2008 Comedy about a young high-flying career woman getting pregnant after a drunken one-night stand & the consequences of this for her & the father, who just happens to be an unemployed recreational drug user whose hobbies include creating smut websites. A likeable comedy that explores many life issues & has engaging leads in the form of Katherine Heigl (who I have loved since her days in the teen sci-fi series Roswell) & Seth Rogen as the mismatched couple dealing with the unexpected pregnancy. Good stuff.
rubbish - By: martin thomas, 06 Jun 2008 
this gets 2 cause ive given alot of 1 star reviews recently,this wasent terrible but its boring & the performances are bland
Romantic, funny and different - By: Dismal Angel, 21 May 2008 Everyone has seen a movie at least once in their life with a similar premise to this little gem. Girl meets guy, girl gets pregnant & guy isn't exactly the best candidate to be a father.
From the creator of The 40 Year Old Virgin, this puts an interesting spin on the age old comedy situation of unwanted pregnancy.
Alison, a pretty & smart tv journalist for E! goes clubbing to celebrate a promotion at work & meets Ben, an unemployed ever so slightly chubby twenty-something Canadian who spends most of his days getting high, or watching movies with partial female nudity.
To Alison's absolute horror, she wakes in the morning to find she has in fact slept with Ben. The two have absolutely nothing in common, & she leaves it as a one night stand with no intentions of ever contacting Ben again. However after four weeks, she's throwing up, & several pregnancy tests later concludes she's pregnant & the only man she's been with is Ben.
Instead of doing what she's advised by her mother (take care of the problem & get on with her life) she decides she's going to have the baby & despite hardly knowing Ben, she invites him into her life so that he can be a part in the pregnancy & the unborn baby's life.
While I don't think the movie is as hilarious as everyone had pegged it, there were a few moments that did have me laughing quite hard (not too many), I was very surprised at how sweet the whole outcome of the movie is & how two people who weren't ever meant for each other to begin with grow on each other while accepting their responsibilities & trying to do the right thing.
This is actuallly I think the first movie I've reallly seen Seth Rogen play a lead in & I was blown away just by how good he is, he pulls off the confusion & the struggle in his character rather well, he comes off as very sweet, honest & genuine portraying Ben, & the chemistry between him & Katherine Heigl is absolutely perfect.
Both are outstanding as young people out of their depths who have to set aside their differences & learn to love each other out of obligation & maybe just find happiness that was never expected.
