Year One comes across more as a variety show than a narrative film. Purportedly about the beginnings of humanity’s very existence on the earth, it is in fact a series of cameos and skits strung together loosely by a weak storyline.
Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera) are two cavemen who leave their village, disaffected with hunter-gatherer ways, to search for better times. They wind up on a quest to rescue their former village mates, and travel across the Holy Land meeting Cain, Abel, Abraham, Isaac, some Roman legionnaries and party pagans in Sodom, before finally being reunited in freedom with their respective love interests.
It’s a funny enough film. I’m unashamedly a Jack Black fan, and feel he can (and has) carried films in the past on the weight of his own bombastic performances. But even he could not save this ragtag collection of scenes. Perhaps it was the fact that the narrative is forced, so clearly at odds with the material, onto such a disparate selection, that I was left distinctly dissatisfied. It felt a lot like a narrative had been hastily pasted over the top of what should have been a series of sketches. Perhaps it’s the fact that the performances do nothing particularly special at all. I’ve cooled towards Cera (best displayed in my upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs The World review - apologies for the delay in getting that posted) and this did little to change my mind.
There are some beautiful cameos too. A film built so heavily around bringing together most of the Hollywood comedy elite should be able to pull together some gems. Bill Hader as the village shaman is brilliantly dead-pan, while Hank Azaria’s Abraham was a real show stealer for me. Every time he says the word “God” he spits it out with ever increasing vehemence that starts understated but builds to a near-frenzy. Poor Abraham (click for video!).
A shame, because the film is lively and silly, but it never quite takes off.
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2009
Jack Black, Michael Cera
dir. Harold Ramis
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