AS COMEDY pairings go, you might do a lot worse than Jack Black and Michael Cera, an odd couple of wild and mild mannerisms that should strike sparks in any situation. Except Year One, a Stone Age farce where the quest for comedy fire is given a thor
ough dousing.
Black and Cera are Zed and Oh, two cavemen about 30 minutes into the Dawn of Man who are failures as hunters or gatherers. In a village where the cavechicks only dig hunters with big spears, Zed seeks enlightenment by eating forbidden fruit, then gets both of them booted into the wilderness by setting the village on fire.
It transpires that this expulsion from the tribe is a thin excuse for the two actors to wander through the Old Testament towards Sodom and Gomorrah. Along the way they bump into a series of American comic yeomen including Paul Rudd (I Love You, Man), Oliver Platt as a mincing High Priest who demands frequent oil rubs, and even writer-director Harold Ramis himself. Also in the mix is Hank Azaria (Night At The Museum 2) as an Abraham who is very keen on mass circumcisions, with wine and cake for afters. Alas, this is one of the better running gags.
You might wonder how a caveman (25,000BC) could run into Abraham (2,000BC) anyway. Year One doesn't. It just gets on with introducing a ragbag of Sunday school characters. "We are the Hebrews," Abraham announces, "righteous people, but not very good at sports". These are the kind of primitive laughs Mel Brooks was generating 28 years ago with History Of The World: Part I.
Black's Zed is all strutting egomania and Jack Nicholson eyebrows; the difference between his character here and every other role he has played is just bearskin. Cera also reprises his nervous chicken persona from Juno and Superbad, but at 21 he's already a more slyly accomplished comic actor than Black. However, when you have a script as devolved as Year One's, even Cera can't do much to lift the mood.
As well as gags that you've heard about MMM times before, Year One loads up on jokes where the characters are all ancient about modern references, such as "What transpires within the confines of the walls of Sodom stays within the confines of the walls of Sodom." Admittedly the film sometimes teeters towards something amusing and inventive; a chase between ox-drawn carts is conducted at speeds of up to 5mph, causing our cavemen to be travel-sick. More often the humour is as gummy as sabre-toothed tiger chewing a brick.
Monty Python's Life Of Brian used biblical comedy to take potshots at organised religious dogma, and even Mel Brooks managed to work in a Jewish perspective on the New Testament in his 2000 Year Old Man (Oh, boy! I knew Christ. Always wore sandals. Hung around with 12 other guys. They came in the store, no one ever bought anything. Once they asked for water.) In Year One, you suspect our heroes end up in Sodom simply because it has easier possibilities for sex jokes than Gomorrah.
Like many ancient civilisations, many of its scenes end abruptly and messily. At one point Cera is attacked by a boa constrictor. In the next scene the snake is gone with no explanation as to how he managed to get free. Presumably Cera's escape was left on the cutting room floor, and the mind boggles as how bad that scene must have been to get cut out by a knuckle-dragging comedy where Black eats bear poo or Cera urinates on his own face. Far from doing mammoth box office business, Year One seems destined to join the boneyard that is the late night film slot on Channel Five.
On general release from Friday, www.sonypictures.co.uk/movies/yearone/