There�s a pleasing symmetry to Harold Ramis�s otherwise lame comedy. Not only is it set in 1AD, most of the jokes date from about the same time. Boom, boom.

Year One (12A)
**
Director: Harold Ramis
With: Jack Black, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse

There's a pleasing symmetry to Harold Ramis's otherwise lame comedy. Not only is it set in 1AD, most of the jokes date from about the same time. Boom, boom.

Michael Cera and Jack Black, the podgy funster whose charms wear thinner with each picture, are a pair of tribesmen cast out from their community and forced to wander through various biblical scenarios such as the spat between Cain and Abel and that business at Sodom and Gomorrah. The timeline is all over the place, sometimes Old Testament, sometimes New. Wherever the writers think a joke is to be had, that's where the action stumbles.

When not relying on the alleged hilarity to be had from speaking in modern language in ancient times, the comedy is essentially primitive, with poo jokes and breaking wind to the fore.

Cera, as seen in Juno and Superbad, has a distinctive comedy style: hip, urban and laid-back to the point of somnambulant. You can see how someone thought it would be funny to place this gentle soul in savage times, but it doesn't work. With this type of material, a certain devil-may-care, Carry On-style gusto is required. Cera, however, goes through the picture as though he's just had a warm, milky drink and is desperate for his blanky and a nap. Black displays a lot of energy, but we've seen it all before. If Cera is an unlikely choice for his role, check out Mr Vinny Jones as Sargon the soldier. Like the picture as a whole, he's about as funny as a plague of locusts.

In 10,000 years they'll dig this out from the bottom of ye olde bargain DVD bucket and marvel that Ramis ever wrote and directed Groundhog Day.