Year One

Back in the days of the Old Testament, two primitive hunter-gatherer friends, played by Jack Black and Michael Cera, are exiled from their village and set off on a comic adventure through the ancient world. On their travels, the pair meet some of the Bible's most famous characters, from Cain and Abel to Abraham and the Sodomites.

Kevin Maher, the Times: Michael Cera, the 21-year-old Canadian actor and former Juno heartthrob somehow saves the film, through sheer force of personality, from disaster. Here, in what is fundamentally a 90-minute Hope-Crosby homage on the way to the ancient city of Sodom, Cera deploys his deadpan adenoidal delivery with infectiously giddy results. Without him, and left to the mercy of a gurning lead in Black and a half-cocked director in Harold Ramis, Year One would have tanked completely. (Verdict: three stars out of five)

Dan Jolin, Empire: As rubbish hunter-gatherers, the pair are required only to riff on personae they've long since worn out: Black's eyebrow-jiggling, horny loudmouth, and Cera's querulous, knowing naïf. Which wouldn't be so problematic if they'd been energised by a decent script. Instead, they're required to respectively bug out and nervously pigeon-step through a series of sub-Saturday Night Live sketches that deny the guest stars as many laughs as themselves, relying more on gross-out humour than any alleged religious satire. (Verdict: two stars out of five) ·