Everyone's A Critic: 'Knocked Up'

One half star (out of 4 stars)

Maybe the movie should be renamed "Knocked Out," as in 10-count, bloody nose, black eyed, broken jaw. This movie was painful to watch.

At the risk of sounding like a prude, this movie had no redeeming quality. Or maybe just one. As if the world doesn't have enough social problems, let's glorify and try to make light of drug abuse, anti-Semitism, premarital sex and using abortion as contraception. Did I leave any of our social dysfunctions out?

It's one thing to parody the sad part of life. It's another to produce a crude, crass, no-redeeming-factor movie and call it entertainment. Quite possibly the only redeeming factor in the film is slacker Ben Stone (Seth Rogan) and TV journalist Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl) bucked up and took responsibility for their indiscretion and did the right thing. Because of that one redeeming factor, I'll give it 1/2 a star out of 4. Don't bother.

-- Mike Griffin

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None (out of 4 stars)

In David Letterman style, these are the top 10 reasons you need to see Knocked Up.

10. You feel guilty about the good things in your life and decide you need a reality check by sitting in the hardest, most uncomfortable movie seats in Cape.

9. You have a high school foreign ex­change student living with you and you want to teach him/her some English curse words.

8. You are writing a poem and looking for a word that rhymes with duck.

7. You have a hidden (or not so hidden) desire to learn how to use drugs and all the paraphernalia.

6. You find the topic of flatulence excitingly funny.

5. You are considering having sex with someone you don't know when you are really, really drunk and you wonder what that would be like.

4. You are engaged and want to break the engagement -- the parenting and marriage portrayals will do the trick.

3. You recently had abdominal surgery, only want to giggle and absolutely do not want to belly laugh.

2. You own a condom company and are looking for examples to use in your new marketing program.

1. You are a movie critic this month for the Southeast Missourian.

I was embarrassed to tell my children the name of the movie their parents were viewing this week and then had to answer the questions of what it meant. Come on Hollywood, a little integrity would be appreciated.

-- Michele Griffin