Year One (2009) FULL MOVIE DIVX

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Review

Dawn-of-time music thunders portentously from the soundtrack as a band of primitive hunters track down a wild boar. For about 30 seconds of "Year One," we could be watching a drama - or something even more ridiculously straight-faced and somber, such as a historical re-enactment in a TV documentary. And then one of the hunters screws up, badly, and we meet Jack Black as Zed, an overly confident, loudmouth caveman who somehow can't find his place in prehistoric culture.

"Year One" has one joke, but it's a good one, played for many variations over the course of an often very funny comedy: It's the contrast between the modern sensibility embodied by Black and Michael Cera and that of a brutal, early period of history. The comedy turns on the spectacle of a pair of modern-seeming people who keep finding that their best attributes - wit, sensitivity, loquaciousness, inventiveness - are completely useless in a world in which courtship consists of hitting a girl over the head with a club and dragging her back to the hut.

Black and Cera's comic styles are quite different. Onscreen, Black's persona tends to be self-promoting and easily exasperated, a character in constant collision with his environment, who acts before he thinks and tries to get by on bluff. Cera, by contrast, is watchful and paranoid, sardonic and full of dread, and thinks hard before he commits himself in any direction. These contrasts make them a superb comic duo, and so does their one similarity: They both operate under the implicit assumption that the world is a threatening place that must be mastered, either by forceful action (Black) or careful thought (Cera).

Actually, Black and Cera have something else in common: They are both very skilled, very precise comedians. In the case of Black, this is well known, and in the case of Cera, it's no surprise, considering his performance in "Superbad." Still, it's a striking thing to find a 21-year-old actor with such self-assurance, such innate timing and such a thorough understanding of himself as a screen entity. Even Buster Keaton and Chaplin didn't really get under way until they were about 25.

Director Harold Ramis, who wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay, never lets "Year One" settle. He keeps the plot moving, introducing new elements and finding new opportunities for comedy. He mines each environment for laughs and moves onto another, and he doesn't worry about anachronisms.

And so the two cavemen, presumably living about 20,000 years ago, come down from the mountains and run into the farmers, Cain (David Cross) and Abel (Paul Rudd).

Soon we find ourselves in early biblical times, with Zed and Oh (Cera) running into Abraham (circa 2000 B.C.) at a crucial moment. "We are the Hebrews," Abraham announces, "righteous people, but not very good at sports."

Abraham tells them about Sodom and Gomorrah, which he describes as horrible cities in which people drink and celebrate all day, and where the women are so licentious that sex is given freely, to anyone, just for the asking. Watch Black's face as he hears this description. His eyes practically roll up into his head as he tries to figure out how to politely ask for directions.

"Year One" is not always laugh-out-loud funny, but it's always lively. After 30 years of writing and sometimes directing some very fine comedies ("Groundhog Day," "Analyze This," "Caddyshack," "Ghostbusters," "Animal House," "Stripes"), Ramis knows exactly what it takes to hold an audience's attention in comedy. Every character is made vivid and absurd, from the breezy but wicked Cain, to the righteous but oblivious Abraham (who thinks everybody should want to be circumcised), to the flamboyant (and hirsute) high priest of Sodom (Oliver Platt).

Ramis never lets his guard down, never gives the audience a chance to relax, even if it means hanging a lead character upside down and making him urinate on his own face. There's no vulgar or not vulgar here, just funny or not funny. "Year One" shows what has been true since the beginning of time: that it's anything for a laugh.

-- Advisory: Sexual situations and crude humor.