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Heigl slams "Knocked Up"?

by joe.shearer

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She's the one on the left: Katherine Heigl had some interesting comments about the film that bumped her salary from $300,000 to $6 million per picture.

Usually I wouldn't do this, but I thought this was an interesting tidbit about one of my favorite movies of the year. Katherine Heigl, who played the female lead in this year's hit "Knocked Up" said the following in an interview with Vanity Fair:

("Knocked Up" is) "a little sexist. It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys. It exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, on some days. I'm playing such a bitch; why is she being such a killjoy? Why is this how you're portraying women? Ninety-eight percent of the time it was an amazing experience, but it was hard for me to love the movie."

I'm not posting this to badmouth her, but rather to point out a little something about her comments, because I do think in part she is correct. The film is a romantic comedy from a guy's perspective. In the vast majority of romantic comedies, men are portrayed in a similarly sexist fashion. In the case of "Knocked Up," that's part of the point, that men don't understand women.

I disagree that her character was a "bitch," as she said. Her character was a decent person and was straightlaced in comparison to Seth Rogen's slacker stoner. She wasn't a "killjoy," she was a responsible adult.

In those moments when she was being a "bitch," she was hormonal, but she felt bad about her blowups.

It seems to me that more than her slamming the movie, it demonstrates her lack of understanding as to what the film was really about.

Thoughts?

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I agree. The few times I've seen her speak in interviews or read about her, she's come across as being a bit "bitchy" herself. That's not going to get you far in that industry if you start burning bridges early.

BMack on Dec 03, '07 at 11:21 PM

Call me humorless, but I didn't find that film to be all that funny. Seemed sort of sophomoric to me, though I'll admit to laughing out loud when the friend walked into the delivery room and saw a few things he wasn't expecting. Just my 2 cents.

Lila on Dec 04, '07 at 09:04 AM

it just wasn't long enough!

Garin on Dec 04, '07 at 09:07 AM

I agree with Lila. With all they hype, I think I just expected so much more from this film. I really didn't find it funny. Maybe there was one or two scenes I felt I actually laughed, but I couldn't wait for the movie to be over.

theGuru on Dec 04, '07 at 12:25 PM

and you waited a good while!

Garin on Dec 04, '07 at 12:57 PM

I must have missed it where the movie said that her character was a representative of all women... or that Rogen's was for all men... IMO she's the bitch... not her character..

indyclone on Dec 04, '07 at 01:03 PM

indyclone wrote:
I must have missed it where the movie said that her character was a representative ...

Well, I'm assuming she is including Leslie Mann's character as well, who was a little shrewish, but still, they were both relatively good characters. They had motives behind what they did, and they were both nice people at the core. They weren't just bitchy for the sake of being a shrew, and they both also came across as sensitive, caring women.

The fantasy baseball scene was a good character moment for Mann's character. It wasn't that she hated that he was having fun, it was that she couldn't understand why he needed to be away from her, but at the same time she needs that time away too, but didn't really know it.

The best thing to me is that with both Mann and Paul Rudd and with Rogen and Heigl, both characters were right and both were wrong in most of their arguments. Like Rudd's character said, their biggest argument is that she loves him too much.

The film was about people growing up and learning to live happily within that most unnatural act of living with another person (and raising children).

joe.shearer on Dec 04, '07 at 01:28 PM