As a first movie review, I thought I should give you a sense of the vile venom I can spit when I truly dislike a movie. I think you’ll notice that there’s still a bit of delight in it all, but yes - I welcome the hate every once and a while as much as anyone else.

The movie that irked my ire, or however you want to put it, was Year One. I simply didn’t get it. Admittedly, I wasn’t blown away by the previews, but when you’re in upstate New York and can go to six dollar matinées with your good friend (let’s call him Le Petit Roi, as opposed to his brother Le Grand Roi and French child star Le Petit Prince), you go to see things that you don’t think are going to be fabulous. I went to the movie assuming that I’d get at least a few laughs out of it. That’s what the movie promised in the least. A few laughs less than say Scary Movie (I laughed throughout that - the first one to be clear), but more than say Schnidler’s List.

The movie didn’t even come through on the “Let’s have a few laughs together promise.” Too much of the humor was predicated on fart and shit humor for me. Then the other half of the humor was based solely on the fact that they had two actors (Michael Cera and Jack Black) who play awkward incredibly well. Then there were a few “Hey! This is taking place in the WAY past!” jokes that fell flat. I laughed once at the actual movie, and I’m not positive it was supposed to be an incredibly funny moment, but both Le Petit Roi and I found it to be the only memorable funny moment of the movie. Jack Black just randomly goes into rock mode and screams, “Slave Girl! Bring me more wiiiiiiiiine!” while sliding across the floor. It was hilarious because it came from nowhere and was the one thing out of the movie that didn’t seem played out or expected or just awkward.

Maybe it’s just my sense of humor didn’t align with that of the Year One crew. I don’t find fart and shit humor all that funny (one of the reasons I don’t find South Park all that great, because they’ll have a great episode ridiculing World of Warcraft, but all anyone remembers is Cartman shitting on his mom). The thing is - I can find awkward humor funny. I love Arrested Development, for example - and saying Cera is awkward in that is more of an understatement than saying Yao Ming is Chinese. There are many different types of humor obviously and Year One had some that I thought I would enjoy. I just don’t think they truly delivered with it.

The movie did, however, have stiff competition. If you look at other movies that created satire off of a similar premise to Year One, there are two comedic stalwarts out there - Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Mel Brooks’s History of the World: Part 1. Both of those are classics that already covered a lot of the humorous historical situations that Year One might have wanted to cover. So maybe they decided to go the other way and try the lowest common denominator humor, which in the end doesn’t appeal to me at all.

The most telling part of my movie going experience with Year One is that Le Petit Roi and I spent the entire movie wishing we had gone to see The Proposal instead.

Blissful adoration for the greatness of film will come shortly in another post.