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'Year One' is a total zero
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Ugggg.
Have you ever heard a joke so many times that it just isn't funny anymore. It could be a really great joke that you laughed your butt off at, but now you've heard it over and over and it's just not the same. Welcome to what watching Year One is like.
The film, which chronicles the adventures of two cavemen/forest people/idiots, Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera), who leave their secluded village after being kicked out for eating forbidden fruit and stumble into some sort of chronologically destroyed Bible (not that the Bible is very chronological in the first place) in which they have to deal with a variety of "humorous" circumstances in order to save their loves, is like one long, boring punch-line you've heard a million times before. There's no meat to the film, it's just a bunch of scene slathered together to allow two comedians to perform the same roles they've been doing for their entire careers. It's even more annoying because you know that Black can do better, and that Cera can at least deliver the character he plays in every film far better than he does here.
This is Jack Black and Michael Cera doing Jack Black and Michael Cera, the problem is that that was funny about three years ago and now it's just kind of predictable and boring. What's that Jack Black? You're going to act a little crazy and talk funny? Get out! Oh, Michael Cera! How delightfully charming your inability to talk to girls is. I bet at some point in the movie you'll be stuttering a lot and the girl will just kiss you out of the blue! Goodness, how exciting.
Sarcasm as thick as anyone laughing at the majority of the jokes in the film aside, the movie pretty much fails everywhere else too. For brief instances it looks like it will shine every once in a while as a commentary on some of the more ridiculous ideas and traditions in religious beliefs, but almost every time it does the film veers straight into a poorly delivered bodily fluid joke that falls flat on its face and then lies on the floor for everyone to stare at as if if it keeps on going it might actually get funny.
What the heck happened to Harold Ramis? He use to have the directorial equivalent of perfect comedy timing, but Year One is so disjointed and poorly paced that you're never sure where it's going or when you're supposed to laugh. Some scenes just end with no punch at all and no connection to the rest of the story. Maybe he had always been given a better script (though he wrote on this one too), and thus was made to look better, because a veteran director shouldn't be making some of the mistakes he did here.
Most of the blame must rest on Black and Cera though, as they bring almost nothing to the table that is new, interesting or funny. They're not even a very good odd couple, unless you're looking for a couple that is actually odd with each other and not in the funny way. Hopefully this is a loud wake up call for everyone involved that they need to start doing something original or else the comedy crown will slip away from them. If The Hangover is any indication it actually already has.\
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