Frankly, I thought Year One -- with Jack Black and Michael Cera as paleolithic pals on a journey -- was funnier when Roland Emmerich made it and it was called 10,000 B.C.
But that movie was supposedly serious.
Actually, this sloppy, joke-poor mess of a pre-historical romp is reminiscent in only the worst way of the old Hope/Crosby "road movies" (ask your grandparents), in that it stars personae rather than actors.
Whatever happens, the funny rests entirely on Black and Cera's patented reactions.
Case in point: Our "cavemen," Zed (Black) and Oh (Cera) make the acquaintance of the Old Testament's Abraham (I'll try to explain anon), played by Hank Azaria.
Apparently jazzed on Jehovah by that experience with Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Superbad's McLovin'), he announces joyfully that our boys must be circumcised in order to join the chosen people.
Oh mumbles nervously about sleeping on it, while Zed's eyes dart back and forth, his face frozen in a smirk that suggests any second he'll run off screaming, which he does.
This is pretty much the standard reaction to all moments of peril, and whether you find them funny depends whether you're tired yet of Black and Cera's respective single comic notes. (Consider that in Tropic Thunder, Black was the only cast member who didn't get to stretch. Even Tom Cruise did, for Pete's sake).
I can see why director Harold Ramis would see this as an acceptable approach to a comedy.
After all, back in the day, Stripes rode almost entirely on Bill Murray's deadpan. But that was Bill Murray.
But to start at the beginning, Year One shares with 10,000 B.C. the inexplicable notion that short hikes equal trips through time.
We don't know where they're marking year one from, but when we meet Zed and Oh, they're the tribe misfits in a clearly Stone Age collective of hunters and gatherers, each in love in vain with, respectively, Maya (June Diane Raphael) and Eema (June Temple).
Inevitably exiled, they cross a hill and encounter a couple of Bronze Age brothers named Cain (David Cross) and Abel (Paul Rudd). Given his character, you can imagine how short Rudd's cameo is.
A flight from Biblical retribution later, Zed, Oh and Cain are in with the Hebrews, and then flee for the sake of their foreskins, to the city of Sodom (where the motto is "What happens within the walls of Sodom, stays within the walls of Sodom")
There the story finds a place to stay put. Zed and Cain con their way into jobs as Sodomite soldiers (wearing what appear to be Roman helmets), Oh becomes a slave who captures the creepy fancy of the corpulent High Priest (Oliver Platt).
Maya, Eema and our heroes' former bully Marlak (Matthew Willig) also turn up as captured slaves.
Thus does a rudimentary escape plot fall together, the better to fill time just as the joke level falls to near zero (by the third time Cain hugs Zed and Oh and calls them "brothers," and Oh murmurs, "Don't kill me," tumbleweeds begin rolling down the theatre aisles).
Indeed, this is one of the few comedies I've ever seen that seems to be running out of jokes by the end of the trailer -- which, it goes without saying, gives away all the movie's best gags for free.
Generously, the studio is giving you a chance to save 12 bucks. Take it.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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