The director of The 40 Year Old Virgin follows it up with a film that manages to be raunchy, true and very sweet all at the same time. It sort of ambles along in the way many scripts by directors do, lacking the tightness of structure - but this means the film is less predictable (for instance, there is no "appearance of an ex" scene for the two leads, or an overdone ticking clock).
Seth Rogen is magnificent as the slacker hero and Katherine Heigl very likable as the TV girl who gets preggers - she's perhaps just a bit too beautiful and nice to go for Rogen; I know a lot of stressed out TV girls who would go for him, because he makes her laugh and because to be blunt they're desperate to get hitched, but we don't see that here - she's young, seems to be well adjusted and well liked, so is threatens the reality of the piece, but you like the actors and the whole thing so much you go with it. (Heigl has just earned the worship of the entire overweight-underweight-comic-book-reading-section of the Western World - she could spend the rest of her life making money out of attending sci-fi conventions).
Some of the arguments between couples are so spot on and funny - not just between the lead duo but between her sister and brother in law (I especially liked the "just because you're shouting doesn't mean its not mean" exchange and the "I'm hormonal I'm allowed to be angry").
The film "goes there" in the way many pregnancy comedies don't - we see the crowning (nb the baby sfx, pregnant tummy, etc is very well done), there is a s*x scene involving pregnant Heigl. Several lovely moments - the girls trying to get into a nightclub, the initial seduction, the montages.
And it is the best film in recent memory when it comes to supporting characters - there is a dazzling gallery of them, from the wonderful bitchy workmate of Heigl's, Rogen's loving dad (Harold Ramis, perfect), Heigl's chilly mum (Joanna Kerns, also perfect - she encourages her to have a "proper baby"), the stressed out Chinese doctor, the stoner Asian, Rogen's flatmates (who have a definite hierarchy, with the guy with the beard a sort of sophisticated slacker). Judd Apatow is clearly a man who loves actors and characters and it comes through. Wonderful.
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