Year One (2009)


Genre: Comedy/Adventure

Starring: Jack Black, Michael Cera, Olivia Wilde, David Cross, June Diane Raphael, Juno Temple, Matt Willig, Oliver Platt, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Vinnie Jones

When you have a movie featuring Jack Black in the lead, you know exactly what you are getting into; slapstick and stupid humour that might give you more of a headache then entertainment. Zed, son of Zero (Black) belongs to an ancient tribe where he works as a gatherer. He wants to gain more respect in his tribe by doing something good but fails at both hunting and gathering and gets soon kicked out of the tribe for eating the Forbidden Fruit. His companion Oh, son of Ooh (Cera) follows him into exile after taking pity on his condition and decides to journey with Zed to edge of the world where they would theoretically just drop off. Their journey leads them to encounter more advanced civilizations than their own and meet Cane (Cross) who murders his brother Abel and flees out of town with Zed and Ooh. They then encounter the Sodomites who had invaded Zed's village and have taken Maya (Raphael), Zed's love interest and Eema (Temple), Oh's love interest as slaves. Zed and Oh decide that they should go at any lengths to save the people of their village that leads them to Sodom, the city of sins. The movie traverses the story of the Book of Genesis in an outlandishly humorous and stupid manner. Like I mentioned earlier, the humour is very typical of Jack Black and is far too slapstick and stupid to arouse any kind of humour. In spite of a relatively short run time, the movie seems far too long to go through and is quite a pain. It cannot be watched with a mindset to evaluate critically but something to enjoy with friends and enjoy the ridiculous humour.

Thumbs up: Jack Black's humour might entertain some
Thumbs down: Completely outrageous and can get a bit annoying after a bit

Rating: 5.3/10


EmoticonEmoticon