Despite a great double act at its centre, Year Oneisn't that funny, writes DONALD CLARKE
Old jokes? Heck, these gags are from the Iron Age. Ha, ha! Do you see what we did there?
The latest film from Harold Ramis is a disappointment in a number of ways. Dare to attempt a Life of Brianfor the Old Testament and you are, surely, doomed to some kind of failure. Yet Ramis and his team do get large parts of Year Oneright. Most significantly, they have created a delightful double act that, granted a less dreary script, could have generated a slew of creatively anachronistic sequels.
Jack Black and Michael Cera – imagine a more perfectly complementary pair if you can – play, respectively, a brutish hunter and a mild- mannered gatherer who, after setting fire to a large part of their village, are sent forth into a wilderness that, despite looking fishily like the American west, appears to abut the land of Abraham.
They have barely got beyond the mountains before they encounter Cain (David Cross) slaying Abel (Paul Rudd). Later, they save Isaac from his knife-wielding dad and, excited by tales of debauchery, venture towards Sodom and Gomorrah with some enthusiasm.
"Well, that sounds like more fun than Revolutionary Road," I hear you say.
Only just. The noisy, chest-thumping Black and the buttoned-up, mumbling Cera play rather wonderfully off one another. After a decent opening act, however, the laughs come at ever more lengthy intervals.
Oddly, the problem is not so much that the jokes aren’t funny enough – an achingly slow chase between two ox-carts is a genuine hoot – but that there are simply not enough of them. The second half of the picture is so concerned with forwarding its feather-light plot that it neglects its obligation to push its heroes into cowpats and force its villains to wear silly hats. Perhaps Mel Brooks should have been called in for a rewrite.
Mind you, the first series of Blackadder, another entertainment based around anachronism, was a famously unwatchable catastrophe. Let's pretend that some genius could yet bring Cera and Black back for a superior sequel. Anything is possible.
