
And yet she’s supposedly representative of American women. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with his Pete. Who wouldn’t want to have sex with Paul Rudd? He’s adorable. The twisted, demented reasoning at work in that one moment of Knocked Up makes me want to scream some more, and lunge at another drink. “I buy these nice towels and he wanks into them,” Debbie says about Pete, the implication being, of course, not that masturbation is a totally appropriate bit of fun even if you’re getting plenty of action with your partner, but that he’s not getting any with his partner and what a loser he is for being frustrated by not having sex with his wife. Which they won’t get anyway, the suckers, because their wives will perpetually deem them unworthy. And guys are horny dorks who are so sexually desperate they’ll debase themselves - and allow themselves to be debased by women - in exchange for regular sex. Oh ho, but girls are silly, until they get their pregnant hooks in a guy, at which point they turn into shrieking harpies. How much more icky could it be than being unable to touch the person who knocked you up in the first place? Of course, the word “abortion” is not uttered once here, though a couple of “bad” characters suggest “taking care of it.” A suggestion that is instantly dismissed, though it’s never really clear why. If she wasn’t already smart enough to know these things before, and how the fuck could she not have been? If he’s really that disgusting, that much of a loser - and I’m not saying he is, except that the film casts him that way - why would she even consider having his child? A smart gal calls the clinic, gets an abortion, feels bad about it or doesn’t, and learns a lesson about not taking drunken losers home, or not having sex with anyone two hours after you meet him without a condom, a diaphragm, and the pill. Look: Alison doesn’t even want to touch Ben when she finds him in her bed the morning after their alcohol-fueled romp.

Why does anyone tolerate this? Why would anyone want to stay married to someone she seriously believes is fucking stupid? Why would anyone stay married to someone who speaks to him that way?Īnd I suppose I’m the one who’s being unrealistic about marriage. “I wanna rip your fucking head off because you’re so fucking stupid,” Debbie tells Pete at one point. There is no geniune romance if men are merely victims of Stockholm syndrome who come to adore the captors who treat them like shit. There is no genuine romance at all if women are nags who then prevent those men from being themselves. There is no genuine romance to be found at all if men are nothing but large children who are constitutionally incapable of growing up until some woman forces them to, perhaps by announcing she’s pregnant (and why are those women sleeping with those overgrown children in the first place?). (Hello? Latex!) There’s no romance after the wedding, if it’s “honest” and “real” how Alison’s sister, Debbie (Leslie Mann), and her husband, Pete (Paul Rudd: Night at the Museum, p.s.), can barely restrain from strangling each other on a daily basis.
#Knocked up meaning tv
Is this really how American see marriage? There’s no romance before it, obviously, if it’s “honest” and “real” how TV reporter Alison (Katherine Heigl) and full-time slacker Ben (Seth Rogen: You, Me and Dupree, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy) end up in the sack fumbling drunkenly at each other, if he’s stupid enough to think she doesn’t want him to use a condom and she’s stupid enough not to realize he isn’t wearing one. (Some men are expressively emotional too.) That this even needs to be said is indicative of the horrifically low self-esteem with which just about everyone holds themselves (or so we’re supposed to believe), and the contempt with which just about everyone holds the opposite sex (or so we’re supposed to believe). (Some women like video games too.) Women are not necessarily hormonally driven control freaks even if we burst into tears for no reason one or two days a month. Men are not necessarily juvenile morons even if they like to play video games. It’s that he’s celebrating as charming and inevitable and amusing and sweet what anyone who is that apparently rare specimen - an actual, genuine grownup - should be decrying as deplorable. Look: I’m not saying that writer/director Judd Apatow ( The 40 Year-Old Virgin) has not given us an accurate representation of the state of modern relationships as many, perhaps most Americans experience it.

It is “mature,” “honest,” “romantic,” “warm and fuzzy,” “straight from the heart,” “humane,” even - Jesus H. This is the only possible conclusion to be drawn from the rave reviews being showered upon Knocked Up.
