Talent is wasted on a Biblical scale in Harold Ramis' "Year One." Blending religious and historical events together into one vague, "back-in-the-day" skit, "Year One" never approaches the kindred films of yesteryear like "History of the World Part 1" or "Life of Brian".
Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera) are hunter-gatherers, who fail at the only two jobs available to them: hunting and gathering. They do manage to have love-interests, Maya (June Diane Raphael) and Eema (Juno Temple). Like Zed's aim with a spear, there is little accuracy here. One of many anachronisms is the presence of a Tree of Knowledge, from which Zed eats the forbidden fruit, with no apparent effect.
Zed and Oh are banished from the tribe. In their ensuing adventure, they meet Biblical characters including Cain and Abel (David Cross and Paul Rudd), and Abraham and Isaac (Hank Azaria and Christopher-Mintz Plasse). Though Cross and Azaria deliver some laughs, these encounters are, like Earth was considered at the time, flat.
Our heroes then find themselves in the city of Sodom, now employed as royal guards to the Princess Inanna (Olivia Wilde), who takes an interest in Zed. Maya and Eema, who have been sold into slavery, turn up here too. They are to be sacrificed to the rain gods by the hairy and horny High Priest (Oliver Platt), who is one of the few sources of humor in this pained plot.
Though much of the action takes place in Sodom, the only orgy to be had in "Year One" is of the scatological kind, as viewers are subjected to various kinds of crap, piss, fart, and vomit jokes. Someone is even struck by a thrown testicle.
Cera and Black do their familiar shticks, but without much of a movie around them, they often seem to be talking to themselves. The least funny thing about "Year One" is how Harold Ramis ("Ghostbusters", "Groundhog Day") wrote such a screenplay, along with co-writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg ("The Office").
Though "Year One" feels longer than it is, you may wish it were a bit longer, just so you could watch Sodom, and the rest of the film, be destroyed.
