Karen Heller | Dweeb gets dazzler in 'Knocked Up'

The new hit comedy

Knocked Up

is a surprisingly old-fashioned movie. The hero, this time Seth Rogen, is yet again a complete and utter loser - no job, no direction, no waistline - who lands a total babe, Katherine Heigl, who possesses all three.

This being 2007 and all that, her job is dependent on her looks as an on-air reporter at E!, the entertainment channel for people who find People magazine too taxing.

Rogen, 25, is a talented performer with excellent timing, who happens to be the muse of gifted geek writer/director Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin and, appropriately enough, Freaks and Geeks). This means Rogen's career may flourish for years, long after his appearance and vanity have gone to pot.

A good thing, as this happened years ago, literally.

Rogen spends much of the movie in an altered state of consciousness. Indeed, dope inspires his fleeting moments of creativity, inhaling under a fishbowl, in a gas mask, saving every Baggie from every purchase he's ever made. He's the Cheech for Generation Whatever.

Heigl, of Grey's Anatomy, is also a talented performer with excellent timing, who happens to be a recovering model and No. 14 (before Avril, after Beyoncé) on Maxim's Hot 100.

If you saw Rogen and Heigl together in Malibu, the first response might be, "Gee, he must have a lot of money."

Which, thanks to Apatow, he does.

Knocked Up is an old-fashioned movie in other ways in that abortion is never contemplated, let alone mentioned. Schmabortion, Rogen's potty-mouthed pals call it, capable of uttering every word but this one. Heigl lives with her married sister (played by the wondrous Leslie Mann, Apatow's babelicious wife), who's a Red Bull-fueled harridan, a foreshadowing of what happens when hot girls wed. By movie's end, Rogen has become a better man, even reading baby books, without Heigl's yelling at him or having to shave.

It's The Taming of the Schlub, yet a total man's fantasy, improvement done on his terms.

Rogen looks like Will Ferrell's slacker nephew. You can picture the two, both with Chia Pet fros, hanging out with Jack Black, The Office's losers, and Jon Heder, counting their residuals. Ferrell's the king of the dweebs, his box-office totals approaching $1 billion and a major star of only four years.

Newsweek dubs them Beta Males. To producers, they represent Alpha Profits, more bankable than studs like Josh Hartnett or suspected invertebrate Orlando Bloom, who is DOA without CGI.

Only in this alternate cosmos would winsome Paul Rudd keep being cast as second banana to mooks like Rogen, Steven Carell and Ferrell. The geeks have inherited the Earth, along with their man boobs, subsidiary chins and kudzu hair.

When talented women writer/directors like Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers cast alter egos, they hire Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, Nicole Kidman or Cameron Diaz - you know, the type of women with whom most women can truly identify. Women whose thighs are the size of other women's wrists. Women who seem resistant to the whole annoying aging business. Women who can't take a bad picture even while wearing white ensembles on screen, which add precisely 23 pounds to one's appearance.

Despite all this, Knocked Up is an affecting, memorable comedy. I liked it in spite of the fact that the woman was perfect and the man was far from it, and abortion couldn't be mentioned, as if several protest groups had gotten their hands on the script. I know, no baby, no plot, no title but, still, the characters couldn't even utter the word?

A dozen years ago, Rudd would have played the romantic interest (as he did in Clueless) and someone like Rogen the best friend, and the woman would have still looked precisely like Heigl but, hey, that's progress for you.