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06/18/09
Year One (2009)
15
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:149
Fresh:23
Rotten:126
Average Rating:3.9/10
Consensus: Year One is a poorly executed, slapdash comedy in which the talent both in front of and behind the camera never seem to be on the same page.
Australian Theatrical Release:
Jun 18, 2009 Wide
US Box Office: $43,337,279
Synopsis: When a couple of lazy hunter-gatherers (Jack Black and Michael Cera) are banished from their primitive village, they set off on an epic journey through the ancient world in Columbia Pictures'... [More]
Starring: Jack Black, Michael Cera, Oliver Platt, David Cross
Director: Harold Ramis
Reviews for Year One
121 - 140 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
Year One is a dreary experience, and all the ending accomplishes is to bring it to a close. Even in the credit cookies, you don't sense the actors having much fun.
06/18/09
Top CriticAny good will the movie generates is grated right back off by Black, whose obnoxiousness has lost whatever charm it once possessed.
06/18/09
Ramis' challenge in Year One, which he wrote with Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, is to keep the vibe loose while delivering the laughs. They come in fits and starts.
06/18/09
Year One -- a film so simple-minded that even a caveman could have written it. Or could have directed it …
06/18/09
The actors make a surprisingly effective comic team, with Black's manic energy trampolining off Cera's deflated passivity.
06/18/09
Creative desperation leads to slapdash boredom in Year One, a substandard Monty Python wannabe that hasn't a story so much as a series of bad, barely connected sketches.
06/18/09
Not much more than another raunchy, adolescent boys-out-on-the-town farrago, even if the boys are dressed in animal skins and the town is Sodom.
06/18/09
Need your fix of Black and Cera? We recommend renting School of Rock and Superbad instead of heading to the theater for this one.
06/18/09
It’s a potentially funny, tricky premise, and in the hands of someone as talented and slightly skewed as writer-director Harold Ramis and a pair of writers from The Office, it should have worked.
06/18/09
Ramis' best may be behind him, but luckily, Year One is not one of his worst.
06/18/09
The filmmaker imbues Year One with all the creative energy of a middling, time-filler Saturday Night Live skit.
06/18/09
If Harold Ramis' Year One were a bowling match, it would lurch between gutter balls and spares, with some scattered lucky strikes.
06/18/09
Talk about a disaster of Biblical proportions.
06/18/09
Year One is a horse designed by committee to make a camel, and Harold Ramis, as much as today’s comedy stars owe him, is an unadaptable species.
06/18/09
Year One is so dedicated to being historically accurate that it only uses jokes that are at least two thousand years old.
06/18/09
[Harold] Ramis and co-writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg mostly avoid the easy anachronism jokes, to their credit, but instead they wind up plumbing the depths of poop, fart, urine, foreskin and gay-panic humor.
06/18/09
Year One is a slapdash film in desperate need of more authoritative stewardship.
06/18/09
Unfortunately, consistent laughs weren't discovered until year two.
06/18/09
Black and Cera are caught in a witless Abbott-and-Costello situation...The comedy-team rhythms are there; the material is not.
06/18/09
Latest News for Year One
June 20, 2009:
Crude cavemen encounter Biblical events in raunchy road comedy. 
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June 19, 2009:
The Friday Harvest: This Week's Best Pictures, Posters, and Video
Happy Friday Harvest, a weekly round-up of the best pictures, posters, and videos that have become available for viewing/download on Rotten Tomatoes. Each section features the... More...
June 18, 2009:
Black's biggest idiot in the village, overly flirty heathen turned moronic messiah tries to hunt and gather copious hairy bodied babes who really know how to stroke their spears, while a shackled Cera pees upside down through his collar.
More...
June 18, 2009:
Box Office Guru Preview: Proposal and Year One Bring More Laughs
Five of the top six films are comedies right now but Hollywood believes that's not enough so two new laughers open on Friday to give moviegoers even more options. Sandra Bullock... More...
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