Thank You, Judd

A review of Knocked Up would be superfluous. If you haven't heard of this film or read its nearly unanimous, universal praise, you probably live in a cave with an army of woolly mammoths, or are perpetually drunk off your ass. And I mean perpetually. Like, you probably have a martini IV hooked right into your aorta.

I saw Knocked up the other night against my body's better judgment - I hadn't slept in a few days, yet I decided to see the last show of the night. It should be a testament to the quality of this film and its subsequent word-of-mouth-hurricane, that the theater was literally packed at 10:35 on a Monday night.

And I can almost guarantee not a single person left that theater disappointed. It was singular in its constant humor - out and out riotous, leaving at least a few of the people sitting around me giggling uncontrollably long after the jokes landed and the story had moved on - and in its poignancy. And this is all I want to say: Thank you, Judd Apatow. Thank you for becoming the new "King of Comedy." Thank you for making tragedy funny, again. Thank you for understanding that insecurities can be celebrated, that losers really are lovable, that life hurts, but that its unbearable if you can't laugh at it. 10 years ago, when Adam Sandler and Jim Carey ruled the comedy scene, humor equaled slapstick, gross-out, buffoonery. Of course they were funny. They embodied escapist entertainment at its highest. But now, as Mr. Apatow prepares to take over the world, he's giving us comedies seeped in reality, with stories that legitimately sting, and characters that, as a fellow human being, are almost impossible not to love. His protagonists aren't heroic because they save the day, they don't stand out as an exemplar among his fellow men, and they're not necessarily the funniest guys in the room. They're heroes simply because they do their best, and they try to do the right thing, no matter how hard, or how silly it makes them look.

It's a simple equation: humor = tragedy + time. Nobody knows this better than Judd. His characters honestly hurt. So no matter how hard you laugh during his movies - and you will laugh your ass off - you'll still walk away with a lump in your throat, knowing that what you've just seen wasn't a cartoon. It was real. Life is funny, once you stop crying. Thank you, Judd.