The new film Year One is definitely taking a beating from the critics, especially conservative ones.

Two reviews by my colleagues at Big Hollywood exemplify the complaints. Comedienne Victoria Jackson expresses immense disappointment with the film’s high proportion of obscenity and vulgarity (she reports that she left the film in tears of frustration and sadness), and John Nolte observes that it lacks a sensible story line, excessively indulges in its performers’ ad libs, manages to have scenes that are both overlong and end too abruptly, has a nonsensical timeline, and is just sloppy and poorly executed overall.

Both of these critics’ observations are quite accurate, but I think there’s more to this story.

Certainly the film is absurd, disorganized, obscene, and ludicrous. Produced by Judd Apatow and starring the notoriously self-indulgent Jack Black, Year One could hardly avoid having those characteristics. Harold Ramis has done much better work than this, notably as co-writer of Groundhog Day, Ghostbusters, Back to School, and the first couple of seasons of SCTV, but he also wrote the inept screenplays for stinkers such as Club Paradise, Armed and Dangerous, and the year 2000 remake of Bedazzled. Films on which he had the most influence as writer seem to have the poorest scripts.

Hence, expecting a logical, coherent story and some respect for audience sensibilities from Apatow and Ramis seems rather a forlorn hope. Moreover, anarchic comedy of this type can be both funny and somewhat meaningful. As Nolte noted, the film seems to be an attempt in some ways at replicating the breezy narrative style of the “Road” films of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

I agree, and would note that while the character played by Jack Black does suggest Hope’s “Road” characters, the one played by Michael Cera is more reminiscent of Woody Allen’s early film persona. The two characters work well together, as in the classic SCTV sketch “Play It Again, Bob.”

The film’s silly, illogical timeline and other such features thus accord with a long comedy tradition, and the obscenity is no greater than much of what passes for theatrical film comedy these days (alas!).

And as Nolte correctly observes, the comical references to religion (of which there are many) are clearly meant to be silly, not satirical. In fact, a speech at the end of the film by Jack Black really focuses on politics, not religion, and warns the people of the city of Sodom not to place their faith in political messiahs, advice that applies today as well.

Moreover, in their own mad way the earlier scenes of the film seem quite positive toward monotheistic religion, with Jack Black’s character defending religious faith and the idea of an omnipotent, fully benevolent God (as one imagines Bob Hope would in the same circumstances) against the attacks by Cera’s character (which one imagines Woody Allen would press in this situation).

There can be no question, however, that the film is chock full of grossness, vulgarity, and an adolescent obsession with bodily functions to an extent that is extraordinary even in today’s no-holds-barred theatrical film culture. It’s as dirty as a Frenchman, as Homer Simpson would say.

Fixating on this unpleasant subject matter, however, is causing critics to fail to see a perfectly evident meaning of the film: that the monotheist religions are the great source of civilization in human history.

This is the clear conclusion to be drawn from the film if we step back from its stream of ugly events and think about what the narrative actually means. It’s essential to note that the protagonists are treated well only by the monotheistic, religious people, the Jews. In their prehistoric home at the beginning of the film both the protagonists are viewed as outcasts, with Black as an inept hunter and Cera a timid, epicene gatherer of nuts and berries. Their life is brutish and unfulfilled, and their fellow tribe members treat them very badly.

In the Biblical city of Sodom, where the characters end up eventually, they are captured, enslaved, beaten, threatened with death, imprisoned, subjected to continual threats of being sodomized, and witness the appalling barbarity, cruelty, and injustice of that pagan society. Whereas the film mines much humor from the uncomfortable reality of adult circumcision among the Jews, in Sodom the people are engaging in regular sacrifices of female virgins, who are burned to death to win favor from their pagan gods.

(One of the film’s most successful attempts to bring the Bob Hope attitude into the vulgar contemporary context is Black’s observation that a human sacrifice is a waste of a perfectly good virgin.)

The scenes in the city of Sodom depict a society of immense awfulness, and the filmmakers explicitly allude to similarities with the modern-day United States, including a direct reference to Las Vegas when a character observes that what happens in Sodom stays in Sodom. That’s an comparison one might expect a from political conservative or the Religious Right.

In Israel, by contrast, where the protagonists are the guests of Adam and then Abraham (yes, the timeline is irrational), they encounter decent hospitality and are treated quite well. Having witnessed Cain’s murder of Abel (the motives for which are presented quite accurately, and comically), they are thereafter continually endangered by the world’s first murderer, who moves to Sodom and finds the place very much to his liking.

The protagonists’ reaction is exactly the opposite. They want nothing more than to get away from that place, while attempting to rescue two female members of their tribe who have been captured and enslaved (which happens to the protagonists as well).

Thus the film clearly depicts non-monotheistic societies as horrible (albeit in varying ways), while connecting these to what is unattractive about contemporary American society, and the monotheistic one as vastly better places to live despite a few comic eccentricities.

Certainly one would wish Year One to be a good deal less adolescent in its humor and rather more sophisticated in its attempts at wit, but it’s also important to recognize what the film actually means behind its preposterous and frequently annoying surface. The wisdom of a fool is nonetheless wisdom, after all.

1) Go to the right places.  I went to the Playboy Mansion to find an agent, and I did.  I was 21 and a Baptist virgin, and I found Betty from the William Morris commercial department there.  Check.

2) Wear something provocative to a Hollywood premiere so you can get free publicity.  I did that.  When I was an SNL castmember trying to increase my movie roles, I attended some Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan premiere (go figure – it was a flop!) in a see-through black shirt with a flowered bra underneath.  I felt ashamed, but I did get my picture in a few magazines.  All press is good press, and press leads to opportunity.

3) Date famous men or up-and-coming smart Jewish comedy writers.  I went on a date with Arthur Godfrey right before he died, and ten years later, when I was 30, I asked Judd Apatow to escort me to some Century City event.  I was pretty much invisible to him the whole night, but we did get our picture in People Magazine. 

That is about it in my list of cliché things I have done to help my career move along.

Well, today I walked out of a Judd Apatow movie crying.  It was the scene where the obese homosexual is fortune-telling by looking at the bowels of a sheep that has been sodomized by a person.  The movie was “Year One.”  I tried to be open-minded as I watched the first 20 minutes of masturbation, fornication, circumcision jokes, continual penis references, bestiality, violence, and Biblical blasphemy.  I told myself this was a PG-13 movie and the writers were “lost” so they didn’t know how vulgar they were being. I looked at the ten-year-old and his father sitting next to me.  I must be old-fashioned or something.  But, then I noticed no one was laughing.  No one was walking out either.  I was hoping that the crude jokes were flying over the heads of the poor children who were sitting there wide-eyed and innocent.  My daughter is 15 and she loves Jack Black and the guy from “Juno,” so I thought we could have a Mom/teenager date.  I asked myself, “Vicki, is this movie making you feel good?”  Myself replied, “This movie is making me angry, very sad, hopeless, and dirty-feeling.”  As the onscreen obese gay man poked at the bloody intestines and told the fifth anal sex joke, I looked at my daughter, and we got up and walked out.  I started crying in the parking lot as we walked to our car.  I am not from this world.  I am an alien.  No wonder me and Apatow never hit it off.

Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera) play hunter-gatherer cavemen who don’t quite fit in with their small tribe. Both are clumsy, intensely disliked and in unrequited love with a couple of lovely cavewomen. After Zed breaks rule number one and tastes the forbidden fruit, he’s exiled. For some reason, Oh follows along and they set off on a series of tedious antics involving Biblical characters, the city of Sodom and whole lot of wondering as to what director Harold Ramis, the genius behind “Groundhog Day,” “Analyze This,” “Caddyshack” and “Vacation,” was thinking.

Judd Apatow is one of the producers, so that explains the overlong scenes full of unfunny, self-indulgent ad-libbing, but there’s practically no story. Like a foul-mouthed, sex-obsessed Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, the duo heads off on the Road to Interminable drifting from one “comedic” set up to the next riffing along the way in that annoying, hesitant-enhanced, post-modernspeak that passes for clever dialogue nowadays: “Yeah, I know, but … you know, if you were … because I could … and then we would – you know what, forget it.”

Beyond plodding, many of the individual scenes are also choppy. Scenes end abruptly as though what the makers had on film was so bad there was no other choice. The whole affair reeks of sloppy, laziness or plain old poor planning that couldn’t be salvaged in the editing room.

The timespan of the film makes little sense. Our protagonists start out in prehistoric times but then walk their way into the Old Testament era of Cain, Abel and Abraham. I bought it, but those of you who didn’t skip World History to smoke Newports and listen to Led Zeppelin might find it jarring.

In many ways, “Year One” most resembles Mel Brooks’ “History of the World: Part 1 (1981),” but one of those ways is that neither is a very good movie. As far as any talk about how the film mocks the Bible… The satire is silly, not mean-spirited, so some effort would have to go into being offended.

If you’re desperate for prehistoric antics this weekend, Netflix Ringo Starr’s “Caveman” (1981). It’s no classic, but there are at least a half-dozen laughs (six more than you’ll find in “Year One”) and Ringo’s wife, Bond-babe Barbara Bach, will help you to forget all about the comedic lulls.