Director Harold Ramis leans away from the "Groundhog Day" side of his personality and toward the "Caddyshack" side with "Year One", a broad comedy set in more-or-less ancient times. The film's cockeyed timeline puts two wandering cavemen (Jack Black and Michael Cera) through a rapid-fire series of biblical events: Cain (David Cross) slaying Abel (Paul Rudd), Abraham (Hank Azaria) preparing to smite his son Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and everybody converging on Sodom, the Genesis equivalent of Las Vegas. The jokes range from droll religious references to Apatow-ready testicular gags, but almost all of the real humor comes from the efforts of the performers to put things across. Black and Cera couldn't be more different in their styles, but each manages to conjure up some laughs just by working in his particular vein: one can appreciate Black's exuberant extrovert pouncing all over the material like a needy Golden Retriever and also savor Cera's muttering wallflower as he flicks in his sidelong observations. Azaria and Oliver Platt are given very long leashes--they know what to do with that kind of room--and Ramis himself plays a mighty-bearded Adam, but it's all not quite enough to prevent "Year One" from falling into that hard-luck zone with "Caveman" and "Wholly Moses": one more comedy that suggests the ancient world wasn't really all that funny. "--Robert Horton"




Stills from "Year One" (Click for larger image)