Saw this at an employee screening thursday at midnight. It's, okay....
The persistent stupidity and blunt slapstick is rather irritating and the lack of any real intelligent insight or dialogue is disappointing. It may not seem like it at first, but this concept really had a lot to it. It's basically an invitation to mock our entire ancient history. The satire while insistent never-ending becomes a bit redundant and even obnoxious. But the moments that are nothing but vague satire are considerably better than the moments that are typical raunch-com junk. It's revolution around sex is just a way to cling desperately to the general formula of modern comedy and succeeds only in preventing the full milking of this concept.
However it is pretty funny. Both actors just adapt their typical character mold to the story but they manage to still be somewhat entertaining and the random events of history that occur bring about a strange forest gump comparison. The gross out gags are really strong and, while blunt and disgusting, rather funny. Some of the jokes work, some fall flat, but they are definitely trying too hard.
Overall it is fairly funny and far more engaging than some recent comedies (yes LOTL, I'm looking in your general direction) but its also bland, blunt, stupid, and formulaic.
2/5 (close to a 3, but no cigar)

YEAR ONE

watched it this past tuesday at a screening. had to deal with security confiscating cell phones so I stuffed mine in my popcorn to avoid that.

i liked the concept of the film and thought the trailers made it appear like it'd be a fun movie but i was disappointed with this film. It's very hit or miss with it's jokes. some of the reactions were laugh out loud and others were crickets. i thought cera's character was the funnier of the two because of his dead pan delivery of alot of his lines. i felt there was an overabundance of gay themed jokes which was a bit of a turn off. my favorite scene is the golden boy look that cera had to display.

overall, i liked some parts and thought other bits were dreadfully boring. i don't anticipate watching this film ever again or buying it on dvd.

grade C

I agree that they overdid the gay jokes. I love that we live in a society that's open with joking about that, but all the over-the-top gay characters became very obnoxious.

It's not a disaster. There's enough in here to enjoy yourself, but it's definitely in the lower tier of 2009 comedies. B-

All the pieces are in place for this to be a hilarious movie -- the lead (and supporting) actors are both very funny and easy to like, the concept is intriguing, even the director has a great resumé; but... this movie fails to do anything with all that potential. There are certainly a few amusing moments, but during most of the film, it'll set itself up for a really funny joke that you can already hear the actors saying, then replace it with some gross/unfunny "eww" joke. And I think that's because nobody involved seems to care very much -- Black and Cera play their usual selves, but they seem so bored doing it. A very wasted opportunity.

D

David Cross as Cain was my favorite character. It's a little sad that they didn't develop him a bit more or even show what happened to him.

The film has a wonderful comedic duo in Jack Black and Michael Cera. It has the laughs to keep you entertained throughout its 100-minute runtime but none of the lines are memorable. Also there are too many gross-out jokes thrown out in there that the film loses its true potential. Overall, it's a mixed bag that could of been a lot more. C

I thought it was alright. The jokes were very hit or miss. Michael Cera played himself well and Jack Black was decent. If there really isn't anything else, I'd say see it but if not, skip it and wait for DVD. I actually preferred THE LOVE GURU.

5/10 ( C )

haha. That's sad for Year One, yet well deserved too.

Pretty lame. The only line that really made me laugh was that line from David Cross discussed above.

It's fucking terrible. It is completely lacking a sharp consistent comic voice and has zero laughs. Literally. The whole theatre sat in awkward silence tonight.

It also feels patched together; I think they must have had a really bad test screening and cut out about 25 minutes of plot.

it is very poorly edited, it doesn't flow very well at all. But the fact that I'd just come from perhaps the worst flowing movie I've ever seen (LOTL) dampened this realization a little at first.

I thought it was moderately entertaining until the last act in Sodom...then I was just waiting and waiting for it to be over. Jack Black & Michael Cera did have a few funny moments and worked well together, but everything around them doomed their efforts to fail. I actually wasn't crazy about any of the supporting characters - the women were too invisible and the men too over-the-top (especially Oliver Platt). overall I give it a C, though up until the last 30 minutes it was hovering in the B-/C+ range.

This is an awful piece of shit. I haven't been this angry in a movie theatre in a long time. Jack Black is annoying, Cera does his same act but doesn't care, too many gross jokes that fall completely flat and a paper-thin plot that does nothing to help the comedy. How did this cost $60 million to make? This was the longest 90 minute film I've had the displeasure of sitting through.

- D-

I hope none of you actually expected it to be funny.

Yeah, it's not very good. Ramis must have known he was screwed when he saw that he was getting absolutely nothing out of Jack Black. He doesn't deliver one single laugh. It's astonishingly really. It's almost as if Black is deliberately trying to derail the film. Actually, Cera is the only one in the film who delivers any sort of laugh. I laughed four or five times and all of them were at something Cera said. Yet his shtick is getting old quickly too. How long can he continue to play the same insecure character?

They also should've stuck with the R-rating. The film feels neutered, especially during the orgy scene. Why was it even still called an orgy? The line could've been dubbed. And to repeat what Yoshue said, chunks feel missing. The film feels compromised, like things were forced to be cut, and that's disappointing considering Apatow and Ramis. Yet they couldn't have cut out Oliver Platt could they? I'm not sure how much the missing footage could've helped since no one outside of Cera made me laugh, but it couldn't have possibly been worse. I don't even want to imagine something worse.

*

So many very good actors or entertaining people involved with this movie... Black, Cera, Hank Azaria, David Cross, Harold Ramis, Paul Rudd.... it's just too bad that the source material is very lackluster. I wanted to like it, and tried to, but it was mostly boring and lacked any good laughs.

It had a few chuckles here and there, and the cast was strong, so I give it a very generous C-.

just not good at al

black was horrible
cera was pretty solid

that's about all i gotta say