I cautiously recommend Year One, the Jack Black comedy about the early chapters of the Old Testament.\u00a0 Granted, my frame of reference is exceedingly narrow, since I am only interested in comedies these days and see very few of even those.\u00a0 But the movie has a nice undercurrent of ironic humor that doesn\u2019t try to draw attention to itself.\u00a0\u00a0 Jack Black is a hunter-gatherer loser who is banished from the jungle by his tribe after he eats the forbidden golden fruit\u2014with no noticeable effect on his brain power.\u00a0 He emerges from the dense wild greenery into open plowed fields and several centuries of Biblical history, getting drawn into the dysfunctional family of Cain and Abel and intervening in the abortive sacrifice of Isaac.\u00a0 Isaac turns out to be a snotty teenager with a penchant for sneaking off to Sodom and Gomorrah for debauchery.\u00a0 The pace of Iron Age technological change is sometimes more than Black and his touchingly delicate sidekick Michael Cera can tolerate: the blinding speed of an ox-cart, with those new-fangled wheel contraptions, causes them to get car sick.\u00a0 Whether deliberately or not, the movie captures the weirdness of our making the goings-on of primitive Middle Eastern tribal societies our moral frame of reference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I cautiously recommend Year One, the Jack Black comedy about the early chapters of the Old Testament.\u00a0 Granted, my frame of reference is exceedingly narrow, since I am only interested in comedies these days and see very few of even … Continue reading