Harold Ramis, 12A (97min)

All hail Michael Cera, worker of unprecedented movie miracles! For here, in this biblical comedy, the 21-year-old Canadian comic actor and former Juno heartthrob takes a weak concept (Life of Brian II: The Old Testament Years) and some weaker material (poop and body-hair gags) and, wherever possible, adds some much needed flashes of comedic genius. Cera stars as Oh, the Cro-Magnon straight man to Jack Black’s Neanderthal Zed in a wise-cracking double act who begin a road trip around the outskirts of Israel, somewhere after the Stone Age, before the New Testament, and during the Roman Empire (don’t ask!). Zed has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and decided that “I have been chosen by God to do, er, something!” so the pair, drifting inexorably towards Sodom, amble through some wildly uneven episodes with Cain and Abel, an obedient Abraham and Vinnie Jones as an angry Centurion. It’s Cera, however, and his delicious, angsty, adenoidal delivery (think Kermit the Frog meets Woody Allen), who triumphs. Watch him stare, for instance, at a sultry denizen of Sodom doing unspeakable things with fresh fruit — “Wow,” he says, with a nervous, Allen-esque stutter, “She’s really making that banana last!” He may, for some, be an acquired taste, but without him Year One would tank.

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