The Miracle of Birth

I saw Knocked Up last night, and was struck by the concept that women often forget the pain of pregnancy and childbirth after the baby arrives, and I felt the same way about the series of stupid jokes and painful flirting that start Knocked Up after she gives birth (sorry, that was a bit of a spoiler, but I'm guessing everyone already knew). This movie is definitely the original that critics wax poetic about, but they leave out the fact that it's also a pretty dead-on example of the post-college, lazy, stoner, man-child culture as well - which can be funny but this borders on sad. When their only extracurricular activity is smoking up and watching naked scenes from movies, there's a lot to overcome for the main characters to find a life together. The two main characters do a lot of growing up when they decide to try to be parents, and they do a lot of looking beyond the superficial to find what's underneath, even when the superficial is pretty painfully awful. I think the realism of the man-child culture actually makes it really clear the struggle Heigl has to go through to let Rogan into her life, and what Rogan has to do to grow up. There are lots of crazy funny moments, and a decent amount of dialogue about what women want from relationships and what men want. Katherine Heigl is very good, though it 's not a huge departure from her Grey's Anatomy character, and Seth Rogan plays a very sweet man-child who actually figures out what he needs to do to grow up and be a father. I was happy to see Jason Segal (who plays Marshall on How I Met Your Mother) as Rogan's best friend and Leslie Mann (from Big Daddy) as Heigl's sister struggling to be a good mom and wife without driving her husband away. There's a hilarious scene with Paul Rudd (tragically underused for comedic affect elsewhere) and Rogan in Vegas when they get high on 'shrooms and Rudd counts the diffent types of chairs in their hotel room - he dislikes some for their bad aura. Overall, funny movie, and after the baby arrives the characters have changed so much that you can almost forget the pink-eye incident.