Movie Review: “Year One”

I can’t bring myself to call this a great movie, but I’ll say this: I laughed.

I had no expectations for this movie, but I did find it genuinely funny. Being a Jack Black movie I was not surprised at all that it took them a grand total of 10 minutes to have a poop joke, but to be honest it was a very small joke so I’ll let it slide. Normally I don’t know actors, but since my stocks of old tv shows that I haven’t seen is drying up quickly I’ve been watching normal tv for a change and have gotten to recognise some actors. First was Jack Black (the main character) I know him from Tenacious D, and School of Rock. Then, the sidekick was Michael Cera, from Superbad (and Frequency apparently, back in 2000). David Cross played Cain (as in Cain and Able) now, I know him, I know him well, but I couldn’t figure out from where (mainly) until now… He played the sympathetic geek from Small Soldiers (I really like that movie by the way).

Christopher Mintz-Plasse, whom I also remember from Superbad played Isaac, while his father Abraham was played by Hank Azaria who is most famous for doing several of the voices on the Simpsons. The next one I had to do a double-take, Olivia Wilde played the Pirncess. It’s not that I have a problem with her being cast as the princess, far from it, I can’t (at the moment) think of anyone I’d like better in the role. Now her I know as “13” from House M.D. but she’s apparently in the cast for Tron 2 which makes me that much more excited for that movie. Vinnie Jones was in it too, I know him as the leader of the “soccer hooligans” from Eurotrip. ok, so far it’s just been me rattling off actors I know, and where I know them from, but since I don’t recognise this many people in the same movie very often I wanted to do it.

When I first started watching this movie I thought it would basically be all set in the forest with the “hunters and gatherers” but after some biblical references (a couple I got, but most I just recognised that references were being made) it appeared that time was progressing at a fast rate.  In the span of about a half an hour they went from hunters and gatherers, to farmers, to chariots and what looked like Roman soldiers, so it seemed kinda anachronistic.  I am ok with that though (at one point I thought they might end up in space by the end of the movie it was progressing so fast) since they only went so far with it.

There is a bit with Cain and Able with “the wheel” being something new, and I’m glad they didn’t overplay that too much (I was dreading that they would when they first were like “OMG wheel!”).  None of the rest of it seemed to leave that lasting of an impression on me (I’m not giving many, if any, spoilers), but it’s basically how you would expect the actors to act in their roles.  Actually, now that I think about it I did like this movie.  It’s not great, but it definitely is good.  I don’t know how often I’m going to write movie reviews, but I’m definitely not going to have a rating system, it would make me sound too much like a definitive source for information. I’ll say it’s good, not great and that I laughed.

Also, expect some time this week pictures and a description of a heathkit I just got.

update: I could swear I saw Anna Torv (the main character, Olivia Dunham, from Fringe) in an advertisement before the movie.