Year One (Blu-ray)

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How lowbrow can you go? You would think cave man humor, which is where writer-director Harold Ramis takes us. Yes, the same Harold Ramis who wrote the screenplays for "Animal House" (1978), "Caddyshack" (1980), "Stripes" (1981), "Ghost Busters" (1984), "Groundhog Day" (1993), and "Analyze This" (1999).

Apparently inspired by Mel Brooks' "History of the World: Part I" (1981), Ramis tries his hand at Neanderthal and biblical humor, tossing pre-history and Christian mythos into a blender and coming up with a concoction that offers a loser hunter and an effeminate gatherer who are exiled from their tribe and forced to trek across familiar Bible stories.

Jack Black and Michael Cera are well cast as Zed, a portly but lazy hunter who has more excuses than manly strength, and Oh, a soft-spoken peacenik who's been relegated to being a gatherer with the women. When the hunters return and one knocks the basket out of Oh's hand, his response is only an indignant, soft-spoken "Well, there won't be any berries in the fruit salad now, so we all lose." And when the always horny, never satisfied non-Alpha male Zed later encounters a beautiful woman, he says, "Sorry, I wasn't listening. All my brain blood was in my boner." Though it's rated PG-13, I have to tell you that I wouldn't be comfortable watching it with a 13 year old. There's crude and sexual content throughout, along with strong language (at least one F-word) and humor that's often dependent upon sexual innuendo and circumcision gags.

But some of the funniest moments come from comedy of character as we watch them trying to survive-as when, taken slaves by an advanced, warlike culture that feels like a little Hittite, a little Babylonian, and a lot of Roman, Cera's character has to give an oil rubdown to a high priest (Oliver Platt) who has more chest hair than an ape. Clearly, even the biblical characters were evolving, but it's Cera's expressions and characteristic deadpan that makes the scene work. Not all scenes do, and for whatever reason, Ramis was so enamored of the town of Sodom that he just couldn't bear to have his subjects leave. And that's where the film bogs down a bit, with the narrative dragging and the jokes sagging. For me, it's the scatological humor . . . literally that produces more "ewww" than yuks.

But in the world of lowbrow comedies there's dumb and dumber, with the latter being so stupid that you just can't bear to watch any longer. That's not the case here. As silly or insipid as the jokes get, "Year One" isn't so bad that you want to hop in your Blu-ray time machine and fast forward to another period and another movie. For that give credit to the stars and the production values, because as we wait between jokes, the sets and costumes are lavish and interesting enough to keep us moving.

In the absence of consistently funny "zingers," it's the picaresque nature of the film early on that holds our interest. At first it's wondering what spin Ramis will put on cave man culture, but once Zed decides to take a bite from the forbidden fruit and the next stop is a pair of squabbling brothers named Cain and Abel, it's that "I wonder what they'll do next" impulse that keeps you watching--the same kind of rolling narrative dynamic that made us smile as we watched Forrest Gump turn up in one major cultural or historical event after the next. But alas, all that comes to a halt once the pair reaches Sodom. Even the he/she storylines tend to veer a little off-course, as Zed's fantasy-woman Maya (June Diane Raphael) kind of drops out of sight for a while and the woman of Oh's dreams, Eema (Juno Temple), turns up in a few scenes that only remind us that the women have ended up in Sodom too. I can't help but think that if Ramis had kept his Geico duo moving he would have been inspired to come up with an ending that didn't fizzle the way this one does. Thank the God of Abraham for end-credit bloopers that quickly pull us out of a "huh?" funk.

Minor characters really don't have much of a presence, with Olivia Wilde ("The O.C.") given more air time but still unable to transcend the usual princess tropes. Only Platt's High Priest has the kind of quirky presence and energy that this film could have used more of. "Year One" is presented in both the 97-minute theatrical version and a 100-minute "unrated edition," which adds three minutes of gross gags.