RATING:

Jack Black, all gleeful id, and Michael Cera, all fussy misery, seem like a match made in buddy film heaven. Throw in writer/director Harold Ramis, a zany, pre-historic plot, and plenty of chances to bring hipster humor to the events of the Bible, and it seems like you can’t lose.
That may very well be the problem.  When everyone is sitting around a Hollywood boardroom thinking, “We can’t lose!” a kind of torpor sets in.  The result of that torpor? The flat out lazy Year One.
Black plays Zed, a hunter, and Cera plays Oh, a gatherer. Oh is fairly content with his uneventful life in the village (he derisively refers to a malcontent peer as a “self-loathing gatherer.”) But Zed thinks there’s more to his destiny. When he eats of the forbidden fruit of knowledge and accidentally sets the village on fire, he runs off to the edge of the earth, with a reluctant Oh in tow. Oh thinks they’ll fall off the end. Zed thinks there’s life in them hills.
While the first 15 minutes of Year One is squarely Caveman mode (clubs and loin cloths, et al) from there we head into Monty Python (by way of Mel Brooks) territory. The boys watch Cain (David Cross) repeatedly bludgeon Abel (Paul Rudd in a cameo), and later save Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) from sacrifice by Abraham (Hank Azaria, in danger of becoming “that guy who does funny voices”). Eventually, they end up in Sodom, where Oh becomes the pet of the preening High Priest (Oliver Platt, who actually seems to be trying) and Zed falls under the spell of Princess Inanna (Olivia Wilde).
Of course, there are chuckles to be had along the way. At one point, Oh, having heard about the debauchery of Sodom and Gomorrah hopefully asks, “Which one of the cities has the most whores?. .. Just so we know to avoid it.” Later, Cain tells the boys: “What happens in Sodom stays in Sodom.”
But the actual jokes are few and far between, replaced with bathroom humor and extremely obvious riffs on the Bible. Even pros like Black and Cera need some structure. Otherwise, as Mel Brooks might say, you just end up with a big pile of schtick.