A surprising morality has role in moviemaker’s work

The holidays are over, but if you’re like me, their remnants linger. You need to take down the tree and find someplace to put the stuff that has accumulated throughout the house. You should concentrate on your New Year’s resolutions and plan the diet you’re facing after having gorged yourself on rum balls. But you know what? It’s the weekend. Relax and watch a movie instead.

But what to watch? Allow me to suggest something from the Judd Apatow oeuvre. “Now, wait a second,” you say. “Isn’t this a religion column? Just what does Judd Apatow have to do with church? Isn’t he the guy that makes those sex comedies my kids like so much?”

Well, yes, this is a religion column, but morality has always been entwined with religion. And Apatow works tend to have deeply moral centers. And yeah, his movies are the sex comedies your kids like so much, but they’re exactly the sort of sex comedies your kids should be watching.

Of course, calling “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up” sex comedies is selling them short. They’re two of the best movies of the last few years. And what is it exactly that separates them from other popular comedies? It’s all about sympathy.

Many popular comedies thrive on mean-spiritedness. For example, Adam Sandler’s movies all have moral underpinnings, perhaps even could be described as fables, but their morals are largely undermined by Sandler’s insistence that his characters’ maladjusted anger is funny. When we watch his movies, we get to be as mean and petty as those characters are, without having to deal with any consequences. By the end of those movies, the characters have learned their lessons, but we haven’t, because the funny parts of his movies are the mean parts, while the lesson just feels tacked-on.

Apatow, on the other hand, has brought sympathetic humor into the mainstream. His first huge success as a producer was “Anchorman,” which starred Will Ferrell as the legendary (in his own mind, anyway) Ron Burgundy. Ferrell, like Apatow, specializes in self-effacing humor. We are meant to laugh at Burgundy’s buffoonery, as well as that of his idiot friends. There are no cheap or mean-spirited laughs at the expense of, say, obese people. When Burgundy makes a misogynistic joke, we laugh not at the joke itself, but at the prospect of someone thinking it’s OK to make the joke. We don’t dislike Burgundy for his misogyny either, because we know he just doesn’t know any better. We can see from the beginning that Ferrell’s character is redeemable; he just needs to grow up a little.

Indeed, growing up is Apatow’s pet theme, as evidenced by his directorial efforts, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up,” which present the sympathetic, self-loathing humor of “Anchorman” in a more realistic way. In “Virgin,” Steve Carell plays Andy Stitzer, who’s, well, a virgin. He collects action figures, rides a dorky bike, and works at an electronics store. When his co-workers find out he’s a virgin, they take it upon themselves to find him a sex partner. But it turns out Andy’s more interested in having a meaningful relationship, and ultimately it’s what marks Andy’s maturation. The sex comes afterward and is all the better for it.

This is in contrast to “Knocked Up,” in which sex comes before any maturation can occur. Ben likes to hang out with his friends and smoke marijuana. Alison is a workaholic who lives with her sister’s family. They meet up in a bar, spend the night together and make a baby.

Many critics have made a big deal about Ben’s maturation process, while arguing that Alison doesn’t change much. She does change, though. At the beginning of the film, she has a good job, but she doesn’t have a home of her own, has hardly any friends, and is in her own way every bit as self-absorbed as Ben. Some critics have complained that a career-oriented woman like Alison would most certainly have an abortion. This rather misses the point.

The moment she decides to have the baby is the moment she decides to grow up, just as the moment Ben decides to try to raise the baby with her is the moment he decides to grow up. In Apatow’s world, growing up clearly is defined as taking other people into consideration and gaining family, which may mean spending less time working or getting high, and even though it’s difficult, it’s worth it.

Apatow never judges any of these characters. Indeed, Apatow’s films offer a generosity of spirit too rarely seen in movies and in real life itself.

All that said, his movies are incredibly dirty. His characters swear constantly and speak frankly about sex. I don’t mind, but I understand some people do.

If you can’t get past the vulgarity, then watch Apatow’s late-1990s NBC television show, “Freaks and Geeks,” widely considered one of the finest shows of all time, which incorporates all the same themes Apatow brings to his movies, without the cursing and naked people. No show has ever depicted high school life as realistically, with so much humor and pathos.

By the end of the series, all the characters have become fully realized individuals, even the few who at first seemed like stereotypes. The whole single-season series is available on DVD and is well worth your time.

Apatow is, I think, a secular Jew. But his work is clearly based on a sense of sympathy, morality and family even the most conservative of Christians can get behind, which just goes to show that conservative Christians don’t exactly have a monopoly on morality, not even the specific morality they endorse.

If you don’t have any Apatow already, go out and buy yourself a late Christmas present or two.

You can always clean the house next weekend.

Justin Fowler is a student at University College of Bangor. He may be reached at justin.fowler@verizon.net.