Knocked Up, a Modern Comedy

Judd Apatow's movie, Knocked Up, is like the brain child from someone if they took Aristotle's definition of a comedy and then binge drank and wrote an entire screen play all in one night. Apatow followed all of the guidelines listed out by Aristotle in the classic sense of a romantic comedy when directing Knocked Up. In the movie there is the comic hero (Seth Rogan) who contains the perfect amount of charm and is a classic example of a neutral good because of the fact that he's always trying his best but is also always so far from perfect. In addition to that is the rest of the characters in the movie who make up the ordinary people, who are all just along for the ride of Katherine Heigl's and Seth Rogan's accidental pregnancy.

The plot of this movie involves two young people who end up having a one night stand that results in an unexpected pregnancy. The entire rest of the film is spent showing both of them trying to cope with this disaster, and realizing that neither one of them is mature enough for the baby, at least at the moment. The Movie ends, as all comedies do, with a happy ending where they decide that they are in fact able to love each other and raise this child in L.A. despite being so underwhelmingly adult like (particularly Seth Rogan) throughout the first hour of the film.

I think that comedies can undeniably make a bigger statement about human nature or some aspect of society while still being comedies, however I do not think that this movie does. I think that a lot of the lost persona and struggling young person ideology that the movie portrays in the beginning, which is pretty realistic, is lost because of the ending where everything works out perfectly. I really like this movie and think it is very cute and hilarious, but if it were to make a bigger statement about human nature or show the ill effects that a poor choice can really have on individual's lives all of that message was lost by things working out perfectly. 

The movie followed Aristotle's idea of a comedy and even added the sex jokes and human commentary about being able to find joy in all situations but I think that if the commentary in this movie were to be more realistic and meaningful the movie would have to end in a much darker way, which would really ruin the movie. All in all after analyzing this movie I think to make it meaningful is to take away from its enjoyability so it is really a lose lose situation.