Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Knocked Up / USA / 2006

This movie is receiving deserving heaps of praise across the board, and so rather than summarize the film’s plot or offer a general impression, I’m going to throw out my take on a particular aspect of the film and see if anyone bites: Paul Rudd. For some reason, Rudd’s character was throwing me off throughout this movie, because I couldn’t tell if he was a variation on his 40-Year-Old Virgin character, or was meant to be an entirely new character, devoid of Apatow’s previous film. You might be thinking, “Well, of course he’s not the same character as in Virgin, Knocked Up isn’t a sequel.” However, jumping off from Rumsey’s excellent point about Apatow’s career arc matching actual maturation from high school to parenthood in a post devoted to Undeclared, it’s getting interesting how Apatow recasts the same actors in multiple films and television series.

On the one hand it’s easy to believe that each actor is playing an entirely new character no matter how many times they are cast, but on the other hand many viewers carry baggage and realizations from previous Apatow films. For instance, as Seth Rogen and Rudd awkwardly get to know each other in Knocked Up, I kept fighting the urge to think, “Of course you know each other! You work in an electronics store together!”

A part of the problem may be that Rudd’s characterization in Virgin is particularly likeable, yet essentially Rudd-ian, whereas in Knocked Up it’s still very much a Paul Rudd character, and yet he borders on unlikable and defeated throughout the entire movie. Perhaps the context in which Rudd’s character exists in Knocked Up affected my overall impression of him more than anything. In Virgin, it is a win-win situation for all the male characters involved, because the point of the film is to pull one lonely male into a group of males, and so the story becomes one of bonding and inclusiveness. In Knocked Up, however, Rogen starts off in a group of males, is pulled away from the herd as responsibility sets in, and then there’s Rudd, a shell of a domesticated male, an island unto himself desperate for any kind of friendship, waiting for Rogen on the “other side”. It’s tough to be fundamentally a smart-ass, as Rudd clearly is, and defeated, and yet this is the character Rudd plays in Knocked Up.

It’s also interesting that Rudd is playing the opposite of his character in Virgin, in the sense that in the earlier film he was the one “experienced” male in the group desperate to have a lost relationship back and become domesticated, whereas in Knocked Up he has no male companionship and wants out of his life of a wife and kids more than anything. Perhaps most curious of all is that the entire description I’ve just laid out is a subplot of Knocked Up, and yet the Leslie Mann/Paul Rudd relationship is more complicated than the Katherine Heigl/Seth Rogen main plot.

Rumsey’s thoughts

by Jason Woloski | Source: Universal Studios 35mm Print
04 Jun 2007 3:43 PM | Submit Comment