“Year One”

Columbia Pictures

Directed by Harold Ramis

Starring Jack Black, Michael Cera, Oliver Platt, David Cross, Hank Azaria, Paul Rudd, Juno Temple, June Diane Raphael and Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

Rated PG-13

1 1/2 Stars         

The new comedy, “Year One” has some potentially funny moments, but not much of the humor actually makes it into the final cut of the film. Instead, we get a meandering series of skits where two cave dudes pop in and out of scenes from the Bible. Much of it should have been funny (Abraham trying to convince grown men that circumcision will be the latest style) but mostly the jokes fall flat.

To be fair, I did laugh during the first quarter-hour or so, where we meet our Paleolithic heroes, Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera). They are hunter-gatherers, and not very good at their jobs. After being expelled from their caveman tribe, Zed and Oh eventually head over to the city of Sodom, having heard from the prophet Abraham (Hank Azaria) that the women in the city are easy.

Eventually they try and rescue/woo two hotties from their old tribe who have been taken into slavery, but it’s a very loose excuse for a plot. Mostly, our heroes ping from one scene to another, hoping to elicit a few mild laughs and then moving on before the audience realizes that they aren’t really laughing. I suppose that fans of poop jokes will enjoy the humor, but other than 10-year-old boys, I can’t imagine anyone really enjoying the film.

Director Harold Ramis keeps things moving, there’s plenty of energy from Jack Black and I’m still charmed by Michael Cera’s shy, teen-boy shtick, but the scarcity of jokes that work doom “Year One” to failure. If you want to see this material covered far more successfully, check out Monty Python’s “Life of Brian,” Mel Brook’s “History of the World, Part 1” or even Carl Reiner’s “The 3000 Year old Man.” All of these comedies proved that there was a lot of funny business going on in humanity’s early days. Too bad that very little of that humor showed up for “Year One.”