All right, all right, nothing's so tiresome as a too-serious reading of a funny work, but I don't want Year One to be dismissed as vacuous. Like all of Judd Apatow's films, all the farts and boobs can't disguise the deeply moral nature of the tale. The source of the humor is, of course, the anachronisms, and not just the Biblical/historical nuttiness like making Cain and Abel contemporaries of Abraham and Isaac. Jack Black's Zed and Michael Cera's Oh are men out of time because their modern idiosyncratic expressions -- even the way they raise their eyebrows and roll their eyes -- are infused with an individuality that must have been unthinkable for most of human existence (and still is, in many places). Imagine the self-confidence one has to possess to be able to tell a superior: "Whatever."
Yes, Year One is a disgusting romp, but a disgusting romp with a noble purpose: to remind us that, having eaten the forbidden fruit, we had better, as a race, use our knowledge wisely.
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