Knocked Up (DVD, 2007, Unrated and Unprotected; Widescreen)

Hollywood's reigning auteur of raunchy romantic comedy, Judd Apatow, scores a knockout with 'Knocked Up' (UNRATED), his extremely funny and sweetly endearing follow-up to 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin'.
With generous helpings of acerbic great humor, sexually graphic dialogue and surprising emotional honesty, Apatow turns the most simple of premises — (a one-night stand stretching to nine months), into a thoroughly winning and frequently hilarious reflection on the pleasures and pitfalls of marriage and parenthood.
Likable "everyman" schlub/Apatow regular Seth Rogen ('Freaks and Geeks') and luminous Katharine Heigl ('Grey's Anatomy') strike comic sparks as the mismatched couple, whose drunken tumble into bed will forever change their lives — "For Better or Worse."
Pudgy, bass-voiced actor/writer Rogen leaves the comic sidekick roles behind as Ben Stone, a genial, pot-smoking slacker living in squalid arrested development with a motley collection of underachievers: Jay (Jay Baruchel), Jason (Jason Segel), Jonah (Jonah Hill) and Martin (Martin Starr). When not firing up the bong or playing juvenile pranks on each other, Ben and his buddies spend their days logging actresses' nude scenes for a website they're allegedly going to launch — that is, if they ever stop partying long enough to do actual work.
Ben goes out-of-his-way to avoid anything resembling gainful employment, 24-year-old Alison Scott (Heigl) is a career woman on the go. To celebrate her promotion to on-air personality at E! Entertainment Television, Alison goes club-hopping with her older sister Debbie (Leslie Mann), the married/harried mother of two little girls. Although Ben hardly fits the image of 'Mr. Right' (or even 'Mr. Right Now'), he and Alison hit it off immediately in a trendy hotspot, dancing and drinking their way back to the scene of the crime, i.e., her bedroom.
Eight weeks later, Alison discovers she's pregnant by a flabby doofus too broke to pay his cell phone bill. Not that Ben's exactly jumping for joy about becoming a father.
The tense exchanges between Debbie and Pete vis-à-vis everything from childcare to his mysterious nights out give 'Knocked Up' a prickly edge that somehow never turns shrilly melodramatic. The laughs keep flowing consistently, even as their marriage serves as a cautionary tale to Ben and Alison, whose relationship is fraught with its own share of issues, both petty and serious.
'Knocked Up' never sounds an overly discordant note, due in large part to Apatow's obvious affection for all his characters. He portrays their foibles, anxieties, and insecurities truthfully, not maliciously. Apatow's empathy for his characters is most evident with regard to Debbie, who could have easily been written (and played) as a shrewish caricature of an entitled, "desperate housewife," but comes across here as essentially decent, fiercely protective of her family, and vulnerable.
In one of the film's funniest and most sharply revealing scenes, Debbie attempts to harangue her way into a nightclub, only to be put in her place by the bouncer, who bluntly tells her exactly why she and the massively pregnant Alison are not getting past the velvet rope. There's an uncomfortable grain of truth in this scene; and many others that gives 'Knocked Up' an emotional resonance that lifts it above most crowd-pleasing summer comedies.
Make room on your "Classic-Comedy Shelf" for this guaranteed SMASH HIT !!
'Knocked Up' (UNRATED) is "MUST-SEE MUST-OWN" !!