Knocked Up has been critically acclaimed to a degree that is unusual for a mainstream Hollywood comedy, a fact that has predictably raised the hackles of some more ardently ‘highbrow’ critics and cinéphiles. The characteristic criticisms for such detractors to bring against the film tend to revolve around the argument that it is not different enough from more ‘average’ Hollywood ‘frat comedies’ to warrant praise - in short, that it displays familiarly sexist attitudes and is essentially a wish-fulfilling male fantasy. Quite apart from the typically snobbish attitude towards genre that these accusations betray, such a view is also blind to the particular achievements of Knocked Up. The film is certainly not entirely without its problems, but I will concern myself here mainly with what I consider its successes, giving particular attention to its vision of gender relations.

A criticism often brought against the film is that it is unthinkable that Alison does not simply have an abortion when she discovers that she is pregnant by a man she barely knows - the fact that she goes ahead with the birth thus showing the film to be inherently reactionary (one person I have spoken to described it as “basically pro-life propaganda”). I myself, in my short review, in fact made a somewhat similar point. However, there are two different issues here: one is whether the story takes enough time raising the possibility of abortion, the other is whether the fact that Alison rejects the idea is necessarily sexist.

It is significant that the question of abortion is not raised by either of the film’s protagonists, but rather by people close to them: first by Ben’s friend Jonah (“it rhymes with shmashmortion”), then by Alison’s mother (“have it taken care of”). This fact is relevant both to the question of character realism (if Ben and Alison were truly so comfortable with the concept then perhaps they would raise it themselves), and, consequently, to the issue’s political dimension. When Alison rings Ben to tearfully tell him that she is going to keep the baby (and Ben tells her that he was hoping she would) we know, by implication, that they have been seriously considering abortion. Although the film does not give us scenes in which our protagonists debate the pros and cons of termination, then, this moment - and the fact that the social world around them, represented by Jonah and Alison’s mother, brings it up - acknowledges it as a very real option. It is thus difficult for me to believe that the film itself is “pro-life propaganda”, since, if it was, the possibility of abortion would not be raised (and raised in particular by two very different members of society - a young, male slacker and an older, responsible woman - thus showing its wide acceptance within the film’s world), nor considered by the couple at all.

There is also the important fact that, after she discovers she is pregnant, Alison continues working. This, I believe, gives a potentially more positive message than were she to simply abort the baby, since it goes against the old adage that a woman must choose between work and family - a point of view that has seen a troubling resurgence in recent years. In fact, Alison’s pregnancy is actually shown to benefit her work, since the studio she works for (cynically) exploits her impending motherhood by giving her her own segment in which she interviews pregnant celebrities.

Beyond issues pertaining to the baby, there is the broader issue of how point of view in the film is gendered, and how the audience is encouraged to feel about its male and female characters. It is here that I think the film is especially successul.

It is commonplace for romantic comedy to broadly privilege a female point of view, whilst ‘frat comedy’ (e.g.: the work of Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson, et al, a tradition to which Knocked Up broadly belongs) privileges the male. This is because the main pleasures offered by each genre (romantic fantasy in the former, anarchic comic abandon in the latter) tend to be aligned fairly straightforwardly along stereotypical gender lines and according to each genre’s presumed primary audience. While these definitions of 'masculine' and 'feminine' are themselves clearly far too narrow, they are also importantly the bread and butter of these genres and, while they do not dictate films' ultimate meanings, they do dictate their ideological terrain. Generically, Knocked Up manages to strike an unusually and refreshingly even balance between "romantic' and 'frat' comedy, which is surely one reason behind its huge success. Similarly - and not unrelatedly - it also manages to strike a surprisingly (if not, perhaps, entirely) equal balance in point of view between its male and female characters. The key to this balance is the way in which the male characters’ comedic immaturity is both allowed to be funny (in the manner of so many ‘frat comedies’), and is partially revealed as also potentially harmful if viewed in the comparatively realist, and female-centric, light that the film gradually begins to place it in.

At first, it is more or less true to say that the film largely seems to share Ben’s view that Pete is a good and likeable person simply because he is “hilarious”, and Debbie is less appealing because she has the less-showy role of the ‘serious’, nagging other half - a comparable part to, say, Sarah Silverman’s in School of Rock (2003). (Even here, though, we should note that Debbie is still allowed early scenes in which she exhibits her comic potential, such as her story about Pete’s masturbation embarrassments, which makes her more appealing). This is a more familiar relationship of audience to male and female characters that ‘frat comedies’ tend (usually, though not necessarily always) to tacitly adopt.

A second step on the film’s path to realigning its point of view takes place in the dinner scene in which Pete and Ben quote Back to the Future to each other to communicate their fears of adulthood, whilst Alison and Debbie sit by, not getting the reference and not being amused. Yes, the dialogue (the scene’s comic content) is funny, but the aggressively childish and isolationist way that the men enter into it at the expense of a mature conversation is also stressed by cuts to Alison and Debbie that show their reactions to it. Comic material that could easily stand alone as purely comic (and which is indeed, importantly, funny in and of itself) is also being subtly recast here as one gender’s refusal to enter into a meaningful conversation with the other.

Debbie is still not happy - a fact that at first seems unreasonable, but is allowed to convince us as being entirely understandable through the voice that the film allows her. “You think that you’re not mean just because you don’t shout, but this is mean,” she says, tears welling in her eyes. And it’s true: Pete is being totally unreasonable and hurtful in a very snide and insidious way. His desire to secretly continue with his thoughtless ‘frat comedy’ lifestyle, despite having a wife and family, could easily be treated by the film as reasonable or comic. That it is presented as simultaneously understandable (he is allowed to explain why he is doing it) and yet also finally unacceptable (Debbie is permitted the chance to explain convincingly and touchingly why it is unacceptable) is a testament to the intelligently and sensitively bipartisan point of view regarding gender relations that the film has by this point created.

This Alternate Take was published on November 14, 2007.