Review: Year One

What is the purpose of the “Unrated Version” of a movie? It seems like every single comedy that has come out in the last 8 years has been released on DVD as an “Unrated Version.” I’m not sure if I understand why. Yes, I realize that these versions typically have an extra shot of boobs or a few more offensive or gross-out jokes, but were they worth of the brand of “unrated”? If you showed one more pair of boobs in Old School was the MPAA going to slap you with the dreaded X rating? Would one more fart joke in Knocked Up have forced it to spend its days sitting next to Showgirls on the NC-17 shelf? Doubtful. In fact, this is another way for the studio to pander to its audience. We buy the unrated version because it seems cooler, we want to see what they left out of the theatrical cut, and because everybody likes boobs. And for this, we pay the extra three dollars.

I bring this up because the copy of Year One that Netflix sent my way was the unrated version. This was my first red flag, as the movie itself went to theaters as a PG-13. Am I really supposed to believe that a movie with the potential to be so hardcore that it would be left unrated, ended up tame enough for 8th graders? After having watched the unrated version of this film, I cannot for the life of me determine what was so “unrated” about the movie. I am disappointed in myself for having bought into the marketing machine, but I also feel a bit let down that the movie itself felt so tame and so……………..rated.

Speaking of feeling let down, let’s actually get this review rolling shall we? Year One is the tale of two cavemen (Michael Cera and Jack Black) on what essentially boils down to a road trip. It’s territory that has been trodden many times before, but it was probably the best way to handle a movie like this. I say that because the movie was largely lacking in plot. The whole thing almost felt like I was watching something more in the vein of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Not so much with the quality of the humor, but in the sense that there were a number of scenes that boiled down to little more than comedy skits, and the thread that held the skits together was thin at best. For proof of this, look no further than the scene where Michael Cera finds himself in danger with a large snake. He gets himself into this situation, and then..............the camera fades to black. The next shot is the two lead characters walking through the woods as if nothing happened and talking about something entirely different. Are you serious? That just screams of lazy writing to me. They worked the character into a situation, had no good ideas to get him out of it, and so they just ended that skit and started the next one? Sadly, this is not the only time this happens in the movie.

That’s not to say that this model is all bad. In fact, it does service what I think is the best part of this movie: the cast. Cera and Black do a pretty good job, but they really don’t do much more than play their typical Cera and Black characters. However, the supporting cast is fantastic, with cameos from David Cross, Paul Rudd, Paul Sheer, and a number of others that I don’t want to spoil. It’s these cameos that keep you going in the movie. Bill Hader is hilarious in the movie, and you probably won’t even realize that he was in it. I was willing to overlook the fact that two cavemen went up a mountain and came down the other side in the middle of the Roman Empire, because it meant that we got to meet new characters. If you’re anything like me, you’ll basically spend the entire movie wondering what historical character is going to pop out next, and what awesome comedic actor will they have playing them.

Year One has its funny moments, but the humor is definitely lowest common denominator. Don’t get me wrong, I was laughing, but I expected a lot more from this cast and crew. I’d still buy the movie two beers, but those are both earmarked for the actors that dropped in for cameos.