YEAR ONE
By: Amy Nicholson
The first half of Ramis and co-screenwriters Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg’s script has fun riffing off Biblical lore and caveman minds. Black charms his love Maya (June Diane Raphael) by making fun of how her parents were torn apart by a pack of wild dogs, and wives and sisters are offered around like after dinner mints. We meet Adam and Eve (Ramis and Rhoda Griffis), Cain and Abel (David Cross and Paul Rudd), Abraham and Isaac (Hank Azaria and Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and watch Zed and Oh get motion sick from the five-mile-an-hour speeds of an ox-drawn cart.
Once the duo make their way to Sodom to save Maya and Eema from slavery and hellfire, the humor regresses to swords-and-sandals slapstick with a cheap and lame overdose of gay panic gags. (Threats to Black and Cera’s posterior or package outnumber actual jokes 2:1.) Chief among the many, many examples of frat humor are Kyle Gass as palace eunuch Zaftig and Oliver Platt’s High Priest, a hairy, horny homosexual lech who takes his makeup tips from that other Christian legend, Tammy Faye Bakker. Here, Ramis, the comedy king of Groundhog Day, is slumming. And I’m surprised an off-kilter talent like Cera would indulge him, swallowing his gag reflex when Platt commands him to rub his chest with oil. The last time that joke felt fresh was B.C. It clashes with the script’s closing bold moves, questioning the existence of God and floating the theory that each one of us is responsible for our own destiny. I’d like Ramis’ religion more if it didn’t overlap with the Prop. 8 fearmongers.
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