Year One, starring Jack Black and Michael Cera, opened June 19 and was the weekend’s major new movie.
The movie is one of the summer’s most highly anticipated movies by teens. The film is rated PG-13 (for “crude and sexual content throughout, brief strong language and comic violence”).
Along with the plentiful potty humor and numerous historical errors, the film contains jokes about God and some of the key stories of the Jewish and Christian faiths, including the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, and Sodom and Gomorrah.
The film is directed by Harold Ramis (Caddyshack, Groundhog Day, Ghostbusters) and features humor from writers from TV’s “The Office.”
Ramis told a Wall Street Journal blogger: “Post 9/11, I really started thinking about religion and what a divisive force it is, which is ironic, because religion is supposed to be about compassion and forbearance and all good things.” (See the entire blog).
Some will see the movie’s religious jokes as offensive. Others may find them intriguing. Still others will find them funny. Some of your kids probably have seen the movie. What do they think? Start by asking your kids which biblical stories they noticed in the film, making a list of all the Bible stories. Then ask them how the film portrayed these stories and what they thought about how this material was handled.
