Release Date: June 19, 2009

(out of 4)

Obviously, "Year One" is a buddy movie in loincloth. The two buddies are played by Jack Black and Michael Cera. If you know these two actors well than you can make that mismatched buddies. What makes these two similar is that their characters Zed and Oh, respectively, are both outcast from their tribe within a few minutes into the movie. The former a failed hunter and the latter a feeble gatherer and both a nuisance to all, especially to a beefcake hunter named Marlak within the tribe. Zed and Oh cower in his presence as if they’re ceaselessly afraid of getting bitch-slapped by him although Marlak is probably capable of doing much worse harm.

The first half of the movie roams around in unspectacular forests and deserts, while the second half is located in the city of Sodom amidst chintzy sets where our boys Zed and Oh hope to bathe in sin. Along the way there are slave auction jokes, edge of the world jokes, circumcision jokes and a gag on a horse cart ride involving our characters to barf because… they are going way too fast. As much as it sounds like that the movie is making fun of people way back when, you know the book of “Genesis” far back, but it is making fun of people of today: a couple thousand years later – the movie is saying – and we still have the same pettiness and selfish desires.

Of course that is underlined by the fact that Jack Black and Michael Cera behave in totally contemporary terms. What these boys want is simple. Juno Temple and June Diane Raphael are delicious babes who play Maya and Eema, both of them share the practical desire for men who can hunt and provide for them, but lazy Zed and inept Oh don’t fit that bill. Jack Black is the same numbskull from “Tenacious D” and Michael Cera is still the gawky boy from “Juno.” The boys make the kind of verbal faux pas you hear typically in 21st century nightclubs.

The script also makes fun of vernacular when Cain (David Cross) and Abel (Paul Rudd, in a brief appearance), two of several Biblical characters to make way into this story, use the insult word “suck” and then discuss the core origins of the word. More irreverent humor is demonstrated when Hank Azaria presents his whack-job interpretation of Abraham the prophet who’s so giddy about circumcision that it must be celebrated with afterwards wine and sponge-cake. His son Isaac is played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse who like Cera was another “Superbad” alum, and here, another weakling dork trying to not get stomped on by the hulk-men rivals around him.

Due to its setting in Sodom you can of course depend on offhand sodomy jokes –none of them are memorable – but you can exclude any visual gags on sodomy. For bawdy sexual humor, Oh has to oil and rub the hairy chest of a high priest (Oliver Platt, plump as ever), and when a sexy wench simulates fellatio on a banana Zed responds by nibbling suggestively on a beef stick.

What’s less appetizing is its in-your-face gross jokes. We get standard-issue yuks involving Zed inspecting and tasting bear poo and Oh’s stream of pee hitting his own face. Director Harold Ramis (“Caddyshack,” “Groundhog Day”) goes in for the close-up. What he never goes for at any point of the movie is any shot that is remotely visually sensual – his shoddy work on this film makes Mel Brooks’ “History of the World Part I” look rapturous in comparison. The blah made-for-cable-like cinematography is credited to Alar Kivilo.

If “Year One” elicits you to have three or four shameless big laughs then it also has twice as many cringe-worthy moments, but as a normal hormonal male in the audience I was able to get behind and cheer for Jack Black to “save the virgins!” Michael Cera is the same shy mope he’s been recycling through all his movies but when he finally breaks a virgin’s chastity it gives him a sense of aggression and hostility that’s eluded the actor’s persona previously. Moments like this are funny, but what Ramis never gives his movie is a funny and consistent momentum, and many of his scene transitions are painfully choppy. “Year One” isn’t entirely witless but it is ostensibly graceless and you come out of it thinking you saw half of a good idea played out.