1st American Romantic Comedy - Knocked Up

Knocked Up

Knocked Up an American Rom-com released in 2007 and written, directed and co-produced by Judd Apatow. The film follows the repercussions of a drunken one-night stand between Rogen's slacker character and Heigl's just-promoted media personality that results in an unintended pregnancy.It goes over the thoughts, actions and responsibilites of what happens after a one night stand that goes wrong. This film has a unique twist on this as its two main characters are complete opposites and have no qualites as we see this through their contrsting lifestyles. There were some accusations of Apatow's film promoting sexism and bulling as in some parts critices saying " At some points it starts feeling like a comedy of bullies, rather than the bullied". The films demographic is late teens to late 20s mainly to young adults.


By just having the main male role as unreponsible, immature and lazy, Ben Stone (played by Seth Rogen) and having the main female role the complete opposite Career focused, hardworking and intelligent Alison Scott (played by Katherine Heigl) it really stretchs the idea of two completly different people falling in lover over a 'mistaken' pregnancy.

There is no ominscient narrator in this but instead we are told the story by charater voice narrative, where each character is a narrator in a way, this is most common in films because we get to see the story from different points of view rather then just one so we can make better judgement of the events on scene and better judgement of the characters on screen.


The first thing we are introduced to is a montage starting with a establishing shot of Ben's house with an open garage, punch bag and sofa we can see just from this first shot that this guy is quite laid back, as to why having a sofa outside your front door would suggest he's a laid back, funny, comical kind of guy. It also reflects his bad qualities like his laziness and careless attitude. We are then shown his friends and him messing about they all seem to have casual, everyday clothes with dirt and sweet marks all over them which again shows their careless attitude, this is also emphasised by their swimming pool we are show, which is quite dirty and doesnt look hygienic at all. They all seem to be hedonists which is clear when we see their drug use, they are clearly represented through the objects shown. Next we get something completly opposite, we are intoduced to a bed with a golden light promoting warmth and calmness, we are shown a room clean and tidy with not a thing out of place, it is very organized this relfects our opinion of this person being well educated, well manned, well presented and a hard working person which is completly opposite to Ben.

We get two different types of lighting as for the first one, we get natural sun light while Ben and his friends are messing about outside this could be a connotation to their carefree, bright attitude to life.The second form of lighting we are shown is a dim very dim light from outside because, Alison is sleeping in her bed with the curtains closed, this direct opposite suggests that they are complete opposites starting their days in two completly different ways also with the lighting used the scene comes across as calm and tranquel.

The film starts with a non-digetic urban song in the background which creates a montage of the first scene with Ben and his friends, then we get a bell ding which symbolises the begining of the film. Throughout the montage we can still here the sounds of Ben and his friends in the background but only faintly because the director wants us to focus mainly on whats happening on screen rather then the sounds. In the next scene we late a late cut of the sound, just after it changes scene and we get the beeping of a digital clock just like in Ben's scene with the bell ding this beep is showing us the start of something. We also get a montage for Alison but with a clamer, softer type of music.


In Ben's scene most of the camera angles used are medium shots and long shots just showing what he's doing mainly, rather then his expressions, its showing his body language intending for us to make our judgement of Ben through just his body language. The same us used for Alison's scene even thoguh she isn't in it much, we can see from the track to her lying in bed that, from whats presented for us that she has a main role, equal to Ben.


In Ben's scenes there is a lot of slow motion put in through editing, used to catch the moment. Some cuts are used to change scenes and sound, this is to reduce amount of thinking time we have to make our judgements on the characters.