Rama's Screen

After watching YEAR ONE, I felt as dumb as the cavemen themselves. This movie is an epic disaster, it doesn’t even have a funny beginning parts and it stays that flat, dull, and irritating throughout the entire road trip. Director Harold Ramis has lost his… funny mojo (Caddyshack, Analyze This, Bedazzled). Michael Cera and Jack Black is the worst comedy pair of the year.This is one of those movies you’d wish had never existed. Will Ferrell’s awful Land Of The Lost has found itself a friend in YEAR ONE.

When a couple of lazy hunter-gatherers (Jack Black and Michael Cera) are banished from their primitive village, they set off on an epic journey through the ancient world in Columbia Pictures’ comedy “Year One.” Harold Ramis directs. The screenplay is by Harold Ramis & Gene Stupnitsky & Lee Eisenberg (”The Office”) from a story by Harold Ramis. The film is produced by Judd Apatow, Harold Ramis, and Clayton Townsend.

If last year I felt like walking out of The Mummy: Tomb of The Dragon Emperor, this year.. it’s YEAR ONE. Every minute of listening to its very dry humor, watching its lifeless attempts for cheap laughs and sitting through crude moments that are more gross than hilarious,.. every minute of that is agony. I blame team writers Ramis, Stupnitsky and Eisenberg. None of the punch lines would make sense. Jack Black would say something that the writers think is funny but the rest of us audiences would think it’s just immature and bland. One sex joke after another that doesn’t tickle your funny bone. It feels like a straight to DVD quality. Nothing about this merits a big screen treatment.

The concept could have potential, it would be a hit if handled differently. Unfortunately screenwriters Stupnitsky and Eisenberg’s mindset are still on TV’s The Office. This is a movie, it’s a whole other league, they should know better. Which concerns me because Stupnitsky and Eisenberg are also in charge of the story for GHOSTBUSTERS 3,… after watching Year One, I truly fear for the ghosbusting team franchise.

Jack Black and Michael Cera play characters that are pretty much cavemen versions of themselves. They go through motions that we’ve seen in other funnier movies. They don’t really compliment each other,… they try to, but the result is two performers in a quiet theater because nobody gives a damn.
What I hate the most is that the movie would put them in an awful situation only to jump to another situation as if the previous one never happened. All along you keep wondering what the hell is the point of all that.

Fat Oliver Platt as the high priest is by far one of the most unlikable, disgusting, despicable comic relief villains to ever hit the screen, Christopher Mintz Plasse a.k.a McLovin’ doesn’t bring anything to the table, Harold Ramis’ cameo is a big blah, David Cross as Cain is the most annoying character of them all.
But I do appreciate the trailers and previews being honest by showing us ahead of time that this movie was going to be a major stinker. YEAR ONE is not Monty Phyton and The Holy Grail. YEAR ONE is a blasphemous waste of our time and money.

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