| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
Stephen Holden,
The New York Times |
Mr. Brooks |
"Who knew that serial killing is an addiction that sufferers hope to overcome by attending A.A. meetings and murmuring the serenity prayer? That, at least, is how the buttoned-up title character of Mr. Brooks, a nutty variation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, deals with such inconvenient urges. 'I'm an addict,' he announces at a twelve-step meeting while withholding the true nature of his cravings. [...] Mr. Brooks, alas, is not a comedy.
" |
Great satire and a deft takedown of the movie, all without breaking a sweat. Pretty brilliant.
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Stephanie Zacharek,
Salon.com |
Knocked Up |
"Great comedies work on us the way great dramas do: They burrow deep inside, planting timed-release capsules of mood and feeling that may self-activate hours, or even days, later. Writer-director Judd Apatow's Knocked Up is that kind of comedy, hilarious from moment to moment, but leaving behind both a warm glow and a sting. This is a picture that refuses to fetishize either the ability to conceive or the significance of our place in the universe once we've done so." |
So this is a movie that burrows deep inside and plants a capsule that leaves behind a warm glow. Is the wordplay intentional or Freudian? You be the judge.
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Dana Stevens,
Slate.com |
Knocked Up |
"My first thought on walking out of Knocked Up (Universal Pictures) was, I can't wait to get home and see my baby. Which led to a second thought: Good Lord, if this raunchy, guy-centric summer comedy is also able to inspire pangs of maternal longing, it's going to do absolutely gonzo box office." |
Finally a critic gets to the poodle's kernel regarding Knocked Up. But Stevens goes on to call The Graduate a "zeitgeist-tapping romantic comedy" later in the review, which, well. . . doesn't seem quite as apt.
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Armond White,
New York Press |
Knocked Up |
"From its white-boys clowning to Old Dirty Bastard's 'Shimmy Shimmy Ya,' to the girls-don't-get-it discussion of Back to the Future, Knocked Up trivializes what used to be called 'the battle of the sexes' by burying it under pop culture fetishes. Apatow's jokey irreverence turns out irrelevant to the issues that once gave romantic comedies substance." |
Because the battle of the sexes is an important matter that is never, ever, to be trivialized. Romantic comedies were better in the early '50s when they took such matters seriously.
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Robert Wilonsky,
The Village Voice |
Knocked Up |
"Ultimately, what makes Knocked Up a terrific film — one of the year's best, easily — is its relaxed, shaggy vibe; if it feels improvised in places, that's because Apatow trusts his actors enough to let them make it up as they go, like the people they're playing. It's more than just a loose-limbed variation on About a Boy. It's a sincere meditation on adulthood, accountability, and fidelity — and, yeah, getting high." |
This final review of the week really drives home how Knocked Up makes a great Rorschach test for critics. |
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