Year One manages to miss the rubbish tip as it definitely has it's moments. But for the most part it makes you wonder just what Ramis and co. were thinking of when they made this, and where they'd forgotten their funny bones. A sense of identity crisis on the film's part alienates both the kids and the adult audience whenever it tries to merge it's slapstick and raunchy humour. It starts off riding on the hope that the audience just seeing famous Biblical passages come to comedic life will be enough to make them laugh, but it doesn't. And when the film realizes it actually needs something resembling a plot, it falls into the clichéd "save the people" pitfall.
But ultimately it's just not funny enough to sustain it's 90-plus minute runtime - a 20-minute sketch may have been the best form for this to have taken. As it is, Year One is a pretty limp excuse for feature film comedy, and with the talented cast brought together, that really shouldn't have been the case.
Article comments