Year One, directed by Harold Ramis, is a pleasingly pleasent comedy. Nothing here is butt clenchingly hilarious or shouts of originality. What it does have is Jack Black and Michael Cera doing their usual thing (Black over-ambitious, enthusiastic under-achiever & Cera smart, socially awkward, do-gooder). It also displays a nice line in adult humour (when movies are all PG-13 these days, it's nice to get some tits and nob gags) that's missing from other broad summer comedies like Land of the Lost.
It's well produced and shot...Ramis knows how to shoot comic dialogue and how to time a gag. Olivia Wilde and Juno Temple up the cute factor considerably while Hank Azaria, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Vinnie Jones and a great David Cross (as Able's brother Cain) have fun in supporting roles. It's not bad in the slightest, it's just not great. Perhaps that's just modern comedy writing for you as it's scripted by some of the guys behind the US version of The Office. But in a broad, big scale comedy such as this, perhaps the under-stated approach isn't the most appropriate.
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