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Creatively it's a giant step backwards, with Jack Black and Michael Cera playing to the kids as inept hunter-gatherers who stumble across various Old Testament characters.
[Year One has] some very funny moments but not enough of them.
This is a significant notch below the great Monty Python films that tackled religion with intelligence and wit.
The people who made Year One seem to think that all you have to do to make a hit comedy is get a bunch of jokesters together. But where are the jokes?
Year One is nowhere near as funny as the ancient-civilization movies I saw in high school: Life of Brian, History of the World Part I, Caligula. Its script isn't worth the papyrus it's inscribed on.
Has neither wit nor wisdom nor charm nor beauty.
Dudley Moore once made a pretty forgettable comedy giving various well-worn bible stories a light irony wash by reacting to them with the skepticism and confusion a person of today might. Year One is basically that, but dumber.
From its ill-concieved concept to its timing-free chemistry and embarrassingly-bad characterisations, Year One is a major misfire in every respect.
a lazy excrescence of a film. Crude, sloppy, flat, and singularly uninspired, its only redeeming virtue is proving that Michael Cera is capable of rising above even this abominable material
Only big fans of Cera and Black need catch this film, and even then, it's far from a must-see.
What's even more depressing than the never-ending stream of sub-sixth-grade toilet humor is the sad fact that Year One is helmed and co-produced by two of the best laughmeisters in the business.
Not everything Judd Apatow touches is gold.
Old Testament meets old jokes in rough, unfunny comedy.
The problem is not the historicity, or lack thereof, in a comedy, but the uneven pace of the humor.
Producer Judd Apatow has gone from comedy gourmand to McDonald-izing in four years. And when in doubt, director Harold Ramis makes Jack Black eat his own feces and Michael Cera pee in his own mouth. Yes, this is at the level of YouTube monkey comedy.
Ramis was so enamored with the town of Sodom that he just couldn't bear to have his subjects leave. And that's where the film bogs down.
This one is destined to take its place alongside films like Evan Almighty and Wholly Moses!.
The only thing that can be mustered up for the whole sorry enterprise is pity.
As underwhelming as its buzz might have indicated...
Black's biggest idiot in the village, overly flirty heathen turned moronic messiah tries to hunt and gather copious hairy bodied babes who really know how to stroke their spears, while a shackled Cera pees upside down through his collar.
Might not be Jack Black's best film, but it's definitely his worst.
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