The Big Picture

• Despite high expectations, Year One fell short due to clashing comedy styles and narrative confusions.
• The film marked Harold Ramis' final work, ending a legendary career in comedy and filmmaking.
• Year One blends historical absurdity with modern humor, boasting a star-studded cast and a unique premise.

Writer, actor and director Harold Ramis was a screen comedy legend, known for '80s and '90s comedy staples like Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day respectively. In the late 2010s, however, the world of movie comedy changed drastically, in no small part due to the success of heavily improvised "frat pack" movies by Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen. Following the major success of films such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, many studios and filmmakers steered towards Apatow's style, and even established directors like Harold Ramis were no exception.

As a response to the success of Judd Apatow's style, Kevin Smith directed Zack and Miri Make a Porno, opting for Apatow's signature brand of comedy over his own. The film suffered because of that, resulting in lackluster critical reception, and an eventual decline in this style of comedy movies overall, but Smith wasn't the only filmmaker to fall victim to this trend. Perhaps surprisingly, the same can be said for Harold Ramis, who was given the opportunity to direct a studio-funded movie for Judd Apatow's production company that rushed towards a 2009 summer release date. Disappointingly, Year One would become Ramis' final film.

The Cast Gave 'Year One' Enormous Potential

"When someone gives you that opportunity and says, 'Let's go, we're making the movie,' you go." Ramis recalled, describing the rush to get Year One in theaters by the summer of 2009. Remembering his early struggles with getting movies made, Ramis jumped at the opportunity to direct such a big-budget studio-backed picture, and given the huge roster of talent attached, it's understandable that everyone involved assumed Year One would become a massive success. As well as Ramis, Year One was written by The Office writing duo Gene Stupnitsky, and Lee Eisenberg and starred seemingly everyone from the world of American screen comedy too.

Frat-pack icon Jack Black stars alongside Superbad's Michael Cera, as two hunter-gatherers shunned from their tribe, who find themselves Forrest Gump-ing through the events of The Book of Genesis. The odd-couple provides the film with fantastic chemistry, and is actually one of the film's highlights, even if they're rarely given scenes just as a twosome. Zed (Black) and Oh (Cera) come face-to-face with an eclectic mix of the Old Testament's famous figures, including David Cross and Paul Rudd as Cain and Abel, and Hank Azaria and Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Abraham and Isaac respectively. The film also stars Olivia Wilde and a young up-and-coming Juno Temple as Zed and Oh's respective love interests.

Clashing Comedy Styles Became 'Year One's Downfall

Hollywood's comedy heavyweights aside, it's clear that Ramis saw the period setting of Year One as his opportunity to make something akin to his comedic heroes, such as Mel Brooks' History of the World or Monty Python's Life of Brian. Given the huge number of poop, fart, and vomit jokes, however, the enormous talent involved hardly outweighed Year One's struggles to balance highbrow and low-brow humor accordingly. Of course, both Brooks and the Monty Python troupe had their fair share of silly jokes too, but Year One seems to miss the mark in terms of saying something profound in addition.

It's also hard to ignore the strange difference between various characters' performance styles in Year One. For example, as the protagonists, and therefore the audience's window into the world, Zed and Oh speak and act like normal contemporary people. This works well as they become the fish-out-of-water in the world of Sodom. However, some characters they meet, such as Christopher Mintz-Plasse's Isaac, also act this way, which confuses the narrative when Hank Azaria's Abraham opts for the expected larger-than-life delivery, indicative of The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur. Azaria's approach is far closer to what Brooks or the Pythons would have chosen, as is Oliver Platt's High Priest, both of whom exemplify what this movie could have been.

'Year One' Became Harold Ramis' Final Film

The pedants in the audience might have also taken issue with the film's title, which implies year one A.D., a date that took place approximately 2000 years later than the setting of this movie. As something that confuses the narrative, it's clear the title isn't intended to be considered for too long or in too much detail, but let's face it, neither is the film as a whole! This is a shame given that many of Monty Python's historical sketches throughout The Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life all take their cue from historical accuracy, even if absurd fantasy often rears its head too.

Perhaps the biggest shame of this film, which undoubtedly had the potential to become an all-time great, is that it became an underwhelming final note in Harold Ramis' career. The beloved and commended writer, director, producer and actor contracted a serious infection less than a year after the release of Year One. Complications led to Ramis losing his ability to walk, and he was too ill to work again. During his almost four years of illness, Ramis was visited by his frequent collaborator Bill Murray, with whom he hadn't spoken for years, after an argument on the set of Groundhog Day. The two made amends and Harold Ramis died on February 24th, 2014.

Tributes in honor of Ramis came from all of his talented contemporaries, but his reach as a figure in modern popular culture was solidified in a statement by the then-President of the United States, Barack Obama. "When we watched his movies - from Animal House and Caddyshack to Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day - we didn't just laugh until it hurt. We questioned authority. We identified with the outsider. We rooted for the underdog. And through it all, we never lost our faith in happy endings." Despite its flaws, the same can be said of even his final film, Year One, which was not only his last film as a director, but also as an actor. Harold Ramis appears in the film as Adam, the first man. Talk about a rib-tickler!

Year One is available to stream for free on Tubi in the U.S.

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