Alison is somewhat more hesitant, not about the incipient child but about staying with Ben, whose hold on maturity is less sure than his grip on his favorite bong. She does not entirely trust him, but she likes him enough to worry about forcing him to change his ways. What Alison doesn't realize - partly because he doesn't quite either - is that Ben wouldn't mind changing, if only he could figure out how.
At a moment of crisis Ben calls his father, a nice, tolerant guy played by Harold Ramis, for advice. "Just tell me what to do," he begs, but no help is forthcoming. ("I've been divorced three times. Why are you asking me?") The absence of a credible model of male adulthood is clearly one of the forces trapping Ben and his friends in their state of blithe immaturity.
Apatow's critique of contemporary mores is easy to miss - it is obscured as much by geniality as by profanity - but it is nonetheless severe and directed at the young men who make up the core of this film's likely audience. The culture of sexual entitlement and compulsive consumption encourages men to remain boys, for whom women serve as bedmates and babysitters. Resistance requires the kind of quixotic heroism Steve Carell showed in The 40-Year-Old Virgin or a life-changing accident, like Alison's serendipitous pregnancy.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up are, primarily, movies about men, but Apatow is too smart, and too curious, to imprison the women in these films in the usual static roles of shrew, sexpot or sensible surrogate mom. Alison is not just Ben's foil, and Apatow recognizes that her confusion and anxiety are, ultimately, far more acute and consequential than Ben's. It's her body and her future on the line, after all.
Heigl is allowed to be funny as well as pretty - a rarity in guy-centered comedies - as is Mann. And Debbie's frustration in marriage is given at least as much emotional and dramatic weight as Pete's.
I realize that much of what I have said about it makes Knocked Up sound like a pretty heavy picture, pregnant (sorry!) with seriousness and social significance. But since the birth of the talkies, the best American movie comedies have managed to confront grave matters and to defy their own gravity.
In this case, the buoyant hilarity never feels weighed down by moral earnestness, even though the film's ethical sincerity is rarely in doubt. The writing is quick and sharp, and the jokes skitter past, vanishing almost before you can catch them. Rather than toggle back and forth, sitcom-style, between laughter and tears, Apatow lingers in his scenes long enough to show that what is funny can also be sad and vice versa.
Knocked Up made me smile and wince; it made me laugh and almost cry. Above all it made me happy.
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