Post-modern awareness is mixed with an ancient setting in Harold Ramis’ “Year One,” but somehow most of the humor still manages to be prehistoric. If you’ve always wanted to see smart comedians revert to grade school hi-jinks for cheap laughs, then this is the movie for you.

Jack Black and Michael Cera star as two early tribesmen who talk like, well, Jack Black and Michael Cera. Black is an ignorant, hulking hunter named Zed and Cera a wimpy gatherer named Oh. A hundred winking “hunter and gatherer” jokes later, Zed eats shiny gold forbidden fruit from a tree, gets kicked out of the tribe, and sets the two off on an adventure. A couple of abruptly cut-off scenes later, the duo are inexplicably hob-knobbing with Cain and Abel.

Although there seems to be a lot of gags and some side characters that go nowhere, Ramis no doubt edited many of these early scenes to be as short as possible, thus giving the film a sense that it’s actually going somewhere—which it isn’t. Since he and co-writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (from NBC’s “The Office”) obviously weren’t aspiring anywhere near the satiric heights of Monty Python’s Biblical-times spoof “Life of Brian,” it’s a wonder that “Year One” was made at all. After all, we already have plenty of lowbrow sex jokes in “Caveman” (starring Ringo Starr!) and Mel Brooks’ “History of the World Part I.”

Both actors do their trademark shtick (Black is a good-natured, hyper horndog, Cera is a mopey deadpan teenager), and sometimes they are able to generate laughs despite the muck they are mired in. Hell, there are even small parts played by Hank Azaria and Oliver Platt in which these character actors throw themselves into sleazy witlessness so eagerly and with such relish, that you can’t help but giggle at the absurdity of it all. Then you’ll want to immediately take a shower.

Unfortunately, what “Year One” will probably be known for is for how much comic talent is just completely wasted in the movie. Bill Hader, David Cross, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kyle Gass, Paul Scheer, and Paul Rudd generate exactly zero laughs between them, but maybe this point is best exemplified by the fact that Ramis unselfishly steps into one of the film’s thankless roles himself. You’ve got to admire a director whose solidarity with his actors extends that far.
But “Year One” fails because it sets its sights so disappointingly low.

Ramis directed “Groundhog Day,” so it’s sad to see him wasting his time on such juvenile and retread material. There are a couple jabs at outdated religious superstitions like human sacrifice, but it’s all so safe and awfully unfunny. I didn’t expect a movie set in this time period to be devoid of crude, gross-out humor, but it’s too bad that it has to rely so heavily on it.

Cultural Sidenote: In 1972, Divine eats poop in John Waters’ scandalous and unrated “Pink Flamingoes,” which garners an NC-17 rating upon re-release. In 2009, Jack Black eats poop in “Year One,” and it’s so passé, it gets a PG-13. Fun!

Tags: 2009, harold ramis, jack black, michael cera, movie review, year one

Man, I hate watching trailers. There’s so much to glean from them in terms of plot and style that I almost just prefer to stay away from them. Every now and then, however, I am drawn to a trailer that I cannot turn away from. “Where the Wild Things Are,” directed by Spike Jonze, is such a trailer.

The CGI-infected special effects world makes everything look the same after a while, and the tactile “wild things” in this movie (despite the fact that their faces have CGI elements) will go a long way towards making us feel that Max is actually interacting with something. Cinematical has posted a gallery of images from the upcoming Maurice Sendak adaptation and–if you must–the trailer is right here.

Richard Kelly is back. You remember him, right? He was the next big thing after “Donnie Darko” finally caught on on DVD. Then he released The Director’s Cut and over-explained everything. Then he released “Southland Tales” and we all wondered what deep end he’d gone off.

He’s back with “The Box,” a thriller starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, and Frank Langella that’s based on a Richard Matheson (”I Am Legend”) short story called “Button, Button.” I hope he can find the balance between explaining too much and not enough. It releases on October 30.

Kal Penn (star of TV’s “House” and the “Harold and Kumar” movie series) has joined the Obama administration. The Hollywood Reporter reports that he will “join the staff as an associate director in the Office of Public Liaison. His role will be to connect Obama with the Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities, as well as arts and entertainment groups.” Weird.

Twitter is the shit, simply put. Lots of celebs are using it, but “Iron Man 2″ director Jon Favreau is the only one working every day on a big-budgeted, much-anticipated sequel. He tweets a lot, and is constantly posting pictures from the set. Follow him here and see comments and photos from the “Iron Man 2″ set in realtime. His latest post refers to Garry Schandling, whose casting is very recent news: “Wrapped day two. Time for some sleep. So great to work with Garry.”

When I was at SXSW, Favreau was on a panel with the other stars of “I Love You, Man” and he was taking photos of Paul Rudd and Rashida Jones from the stage and posting them on Twitter. It’s a pretty unique way to experience life through the eyes of a newly crowned Hollywood giant. You can follow Jon Favreau’s Twitter account here.

The Playlist says that Overture Films has picked up the “semi-fictional/quasi-documentary” movie “Paper Heart,” starring Charlyne Yi (the crazy stoned-out chick from “Knocked Up”) and her boyfriend Michael Cera. The movie premiered at Sundance, and was directed by Nicholas Jasenovec, who co-wrote it with Yi. It sounds a like a weird mix of a travel documentary and the faux mocumentary style of “The Office.” “Paper Heart” will get a limited release on August 7 in New York and L.A. and will start expanding on August 14 everywhere else.

Is the box office disappointment of the rated-R superhero flick “Watchmen” to blame or was it a promotional tie-in with Pizza Hut? Whatever the reason,the latest chapter in the “Terminator” saga, “Terminator Salvation,” starring Christian Bale and directed by McG, will be rated PG-13 rather than the “hard” R the director originally promised.

Tags: iron man 2, Jon Favreau, kal penn, michael cera, obama, paper heart, poster, richard kelly, the box, where the wild things are