Okay, Knocked Up is rated R and by God, rightfully and sinfully so. 🙂 It hits the right notes to attract males and just enough to keep the females happy. By box office accounts, this movie has done well. This movie struck me as having an anti-abortion stance and not justifiably so. The basic premise of the movie is this: girl gets effing drunk, and has a one night stand with a man. Said man is epitome of stoner nation in America i.e. jobless with crazy-as-hell friends who are just as uncouth as he is. Eight weeks later, she ends up with a bundle of joy. What to do? First of all, Alison (girl who gets preggers) lives with her sister (plus husband and kids) in an apparently spacious mansion. This means she has a warm and supportive place to stay with her pregnancy. Her mom counsels her to consider things carefully, but the movie writers expose their anti-abortion bent with a sentence they make Alison’s mom utter, “… when you get married, you’ll have a real baby.” What was up with the ‘real baby’ line? The mother-to-be is not in denial of the fact that her fetus will morph into a ‘real’ baby soon. In fact, it will make no difference to the mother-to-be, IMHO. We, the viewers, can see that the arguments to terminate the pregnancy are just as strong for the arguments to keep the baby i.e. she’s got a good job, good place to stay and a good environment overall. Contrast that with the real life situations that unprepared mothers find themselves in: shitty job, shitty environs, and the list goes on. The good thing is that some unprepared mothers will look beyond that and still keep the baby. The point is that there’s not that big solution (i.e. the instinctive keep-the-baby chant) to this problem. Anyhow, back to the movie, some lines struck a few chords within me such as the need that women feel to want to change their partners for better or worse, living and letting your partner live, resolving conflicts, etc. I could definitely learn a thing or two from this movie, believe it or not. Heck, I probably learned what NOT to do in a relationship. The biggest issue was the lack of communication between both couples. Or I should say, inability to communicate without deterioration into a shout-fest. It largely puts a lot of the blame for relationship woes on women and maybe it does that unknowingly, having fallen into the easy (and funny) way out of things. I do wish they had developed the plot between Alison’s sister and her husband so that we could see how they managed to salvage their marriage. I was a bit disturbed by Alison’s proclamation that her sister & her sister’s husband were miserably unhappy with each other. Oh well, I guess there’s always sequels. Read this review at Slate for more on what was wrong with this movie, but it’s still a must-see movie anyway. It says very articulately, what I feel about this movie. I saw this movie for the princely sum of $2.00 (no tax added) with Matt who took something away from it too. He’s disdainful of modern day movies and their penchant for silliness. 🙂 I dragged him screaming and kicking to see this guy flick even though Daniel, his friend, was the one who suggested that we go see it. In other news, I’ve received semi-official confirmation from the powers-that-be (via email so it still doesn’t feel very official). In other words, say hello to your friendly neighborhood CPR. 😀