This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.

Actor/director Harold Ramis is no Mel Brooks, though he tries in Year One, a hit-and-miss comedy that may have some wondering if we’ve already seen it all before (History of the World anyone?). Sardined full of funny actors and shot on convincing locations rather than the usual L.A. backlots, Year One has a lot going for it, but in the end simply prefers juvenilia over cleverness.

The film may be called Year One but it’s about a couple of zeros, the appropriately named Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera), a pair of incompetent hunter-gatherers who get kicked out of their primitive village and embark on an incredible journey through the ancient world. When their village is sacked and their women sold into slavery, it is up to Zed and Oh to find it within themselves to be the heroes they are in their own minds.

Harold Ramis, who started out strong in the 1980s with Caddyshack and National Lampoon’s Vacation and made the brilliant Groundhog Day in the early 90s, has lost his comedic way. His successive films have mostly all been duds. His sense of humor is old-fashioned and anachronistic. He lacks a modern, more sophisticated comic voice. Not that there aren’t others trapped in the same regrettable paradigm, but Ramis’ answer to weak spots in his script (and there are many) is to simply insert scatological humor. It doesn’t help that the film starts to resemble something like a story just as the credits begin to role.

To Ramis’ credit, he’s assembled a “who’s who” of modern comedians (many unrecognizable beneath their makeup), headlined by the very funny Black and Cera. Black and Cera are like Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, Ralph and Ed. Their contradictory physicality is matched by their divergent personalities, which, for the most part, play off of one another well. Other actors include Arrested Development’s David Cross, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Oliver Platt (doing an effeminate imitation of Family Guy’s Stewie) and Hank Azaria (channeling George C. Scott in Patton).

Much of Year One’s humor comes from the fact that, while everyone around them speaks in King James English, Zed and Oh’s parlance is undistinguishable from that of 2009’s teenagers. That cheeky idiom, in the stone-age setting, is itself humorous.

Year One mixes and matches its mythology, robbing liberally from pre-history folklore, none more so than the Bible (and 1950s religious-themed films). As the odd couple make their way on their journey, they encounter the Garden of Eden, a quarreling Cain and Able, Abraham poised to sacrifice Isaac, and the debauched Sodom and Gomorrah. While an advanced degree in Biblical epistemology isn’t necessary, an appreciation of ancient history and lore certainly helps with some of the jokes.

Ramis also includes a bit of serious commentary, disguised, of course, as jokes. He swipes at religion, particularly Judeo-Christianity, throughout the film, poking fun at some of its more ridiculous, low-hanging fruit while also needling a few of the greater theological tenets. But it’s hardly going to change anyone’s mind. Year One is little more than Religulous with fart jokes.

© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.