<em>The Review</em>: Knocked Up

Fifteen years on, what can we learn from how the movie Knocked Up treated abortion, pregnancy, and women’s bodily autonomy? And what does it say in the era of a leaked Supreme Court opinion that could overturn Roe v. Wade as we know it? Join The Review as Sophie Gilbert, Megan Garber, and Hannah Giorgis dissect Judd Apatow’s 2007 film.

Listen to the discussion here:

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Sophie Gilbert: This week on the show, we’re rewinding back to 2007 to talk about the Judd Apatow comedy Knocked Up. The film turns 15 on June 1, but this anniversary also arrives at a unique moment for the movie’s subject. The recent leak of a draft decision revealed that a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court is willing to overturn Roe v. Wade. The final decision won’t arrive ’til June, but as it stands right now, it’s fair to expect that abortion rights around the country will be severely curtailed.

So we wanted to use this episode to explore how Hollywood shapes our conversations about pregnancy and abortion. And we thought Knocked Up in particular is an interesting way to look at this subject. It’s a massively successful movie about an unwanted pregnancy in which the word abortion never actually appears. Megan, you wrote an amazing piece about Knocked Up and its many flaws. Do you remember what you thought of it years ago compared with watching it again in 2022?

Megan Garber: It’s funny; I don’t remember seeing Knocked Up in 2007, whether it was in a theater or a Netflix DVD, but what I can definitely say is that I was very much struck in this viewing by its pernicious myths in the guise of comedy.

Yeah, very much the same. I have no distinct memories of it, and yet rewatching it, I had moments of déjà vu that made me wonder how