Watch Year One Online

Genre: Adventure | Comedy
106 votes
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Release: 19 June 2009
IMDB Review


Here’s an interesting question: What will you get if you lock few scriptwriters in a room together, with a book on history of mankind, the Old Testament, some pot and one tape recorder? Year One looks like a movie based on a script written in these circumstances.

This buddy comedy stars Jack Black and Michael Cera. This take-a-look-at-our- ancestors fable movie with many fart jokes looks like a crass and weird mixture of strange circumstances.

The movie has two nerds, Zed (played Black) and Oh (played by Cera) live in a mud huts village, along with their loin-clothed brethren. Zed is a terrible hunter, Oh does not know how to gather and both of them can’t seem to get any girls either.

As expected, this kind of discontent only leads to mayhem and when there is a tree of forbidden fruit in one’s garden, the temptation becomes just too big for Zed to bear. He takes a bite of the fruit and their village gets burnt. After that, the duo gets banished from the village and they both head off to explore the world.

As the movie is set in the times before the Mapquest, Oh and Zed lose their way and accidentally discover that the Earth is sphere instead of flat. Audience, at this point, can’t help but wonder if director Harold Ramis lost its way too. After all, he is the mind behind comedies like Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day.

Ramis co-wrote this film with Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky. Whenever the story gets backed into a corner, the writers have just made a cut and run in the opposite direction. So, when Oh is about to get attacked by cougar, the screen goes completely dark and the next shot is of the next morning with few scratches on Oh. These kinds of moments are confusing. There are so many scenes in this movie that are absolutely foolish.

The film depends largely on its actors and characters. Zed has a superiority complex, while Oh has some inferiority issues. Thus, Black is keeps curling his lips, smiling sinisterly, beating his chest in the entire movie. Meanwhile, Cera plays his self-deprecating role quite nicely and he turns out to be charming.
While stumbling through their crazy world, the duo bumps into Abel and Cain. The film has many guest appearances by comic yeomen including Oliver Platt, Hank Azaria Bill Hader, David Cross and Paul Rudd, among others.

Cera and Black can play the role of sidekicks quite nicely, but they don’t make it as the lead pair in Year One.

This is a huge problem. Plus, the movie has no real plot. The narrative looks in a hurry to transport the duo from one funny situation to another. This sometimes works, but many times fail.

There are many lowbrow, knuckle-dragging jokes, along with many gay, poop, Jewish and you’re-stupider-than-I-am jokes. People with a peculiar taste in comedy might really enjoy it.