Last year's 10,000 BC was an incredible farrago of ecosystems, historical eras, and technologies, all portrayed with a perfectly straight face. We move forward about a hundred centuries (movie years, not real ones) to arrive at Year 1, and about the only progress we've made is that at least nobody takes this stuff seriously.
OK, that's faint praise, which is about all Year 1 deserves. Here's the downside: If it's intended as comedy, it's supposed to be funny. Perhaps the director neglected to mention this to the screenwriter. Oh, wait, says here that they're both Harold Ramis. Hmmm, guess we can't chalk it up to failure to communicate, then.
Can't blame Jack Black, who gives it his all as Zed, son of Zero. Tho by far the least competent of his tribe's hunters, Zed has an ego the size of Mount Sinai, and danged if his warrantless optimism isn't contagious. At least it has that effect on the gatherer O, son of Oo, in which role Michael Cera essentially reprises his hapless, gawky teenager from Juno. When Zed is banished for partaking of the forbidden fruit (which he's convinced, against all evidence, has gifted him with vast new knowledge), O tags along.
They leave behind the 2 pro forma sex objects, Maya and Eema. Not to fear, however, as they will keep popping up again thruout the film.
A brief stroll thru the forest and over the mountains "at the end of the world" takes about a week in movie time and 50,000 years of anthropological development to a village of herdsmen and farmers, notably including Cain, who repeatedly brains his brother Abel while our heroes back away in trepidation about offending this obviously maniacal murderer. By Biblical chronology, we're now up to about 4004 BC, but shortly thereafter we jump another couple of thousand years to watch Abraham (Hank Azaria, seen just last week as an Egyptian pharaoh) getting set to sacrifice Isaac. They save the kid, who has a dope connection in Sodom and leads Zed and O there, 1 step ahead of his dad's milah. That's where things get stuck for the rest of the movie.
There's lots more plot contrivance, and a few chuckles and giggles among the fart and crap jokes, so you've gotta give the writers credit for quantity if not quality. And there are many gratifying (and gratuitous) insults heaped on the heads of religious stupidity and political cupidity, so it's not a dead loss.
But it doesn't hang together. For example, early on O is in the clutches of a giant snake and, a few scenes later, gets leapt on by a panther. But each time we cut to him subsequently chatting with Zed, apparently having inexplicably survived the attack. This had the hallmarks of a running joke, but it's just dropped after those 2 incidents. WTF?
So we have a bold, clever guy (Zed) and an intelligent, creative one (O) trying to make their way in a testosterone-drenched primitive culture. Coulda done a lot with that! Didn't. Too bad.
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