Year One

Rating:*

Look at the names above; imagine the period where Harold Ramis and co-writers (behind the acclaimed TV series The Office) set them — “the beginning of evolution”; and glance at the release date — the start of a new year. You’d think Year One would get something right. It doesn’t.

It takes a remarkable collection of missteps to make Black,Cera,Platt and Azaria unfunny,all at the same time. Year One evokes hardly a giggle from the first shot of the tribe hunting a boar to suggestive gestures involving everything from loinclothes to bananas and spears.

Zed (Black),who is bad at the only two jobs open to the tribe — hunting and gathering — and Oh (Cera),who is a man with ideas nobody cares much about,are the losers who perforce are friends. After Zed eats “the forbidden fruit”,both are thrown out of the village. Thus begins an “adventure” that sees them meet Cain and Abel,Abraham and Isaac (where they arrive in time to save the son,but not his foreskin),and finally finds them in Sodom. Women,of course,come in ample measures and smaller clothings.

The only one who manages to survive relatively unscathed is Cera (from Juno),who has a sweet,unquestioning innocence that even Year One can’t besmirch. Not that the film doesn’t try,including having him hung upside down as he is bursting to pee. What happens next is best left to your imagination.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com