Knocked Up | 2007

A bit of a geeky male fantasy set and filmed around Los Angeles but, as ever with Judd Apatow, the script and performances raise it above the potentially cheesy.

The rather nice home that Debbie and Pete (Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd) share with Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) is 531 North Bristol Avenue in the heart of swanky Brentwood (there’s little to see from the street).

Slobby Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) lives with his stoner buddies up in the San Fernando Valley at 17800 Community Street at White Oak Avenue in Northridge.

It’s in the real E! Entertainment Television Studio, 5750 Wilshire Boulevard, just across the road from the La Brea Tar pits in midtown LA, where Alison learns she’s being promoted in front of the cameras.

To celebrate, she takes off to Hollywood and skips line easily to get into dance club, Element, 1642 Las Palmas Avenue, just south of Hollywood Boulevard. You never went there? Too late. This is LA and things move on.

The bare brick wall interior, though, where she meets up with Ben, is Mood, a couple of blocks east on Hollywood Boulevard. Hold on – Mood has closed. It became MyStudio, at 6623 Hollywood Boulevard. But now that's closed too.

Although Alison lives in Brentwood, she and Ben inexplicably head off to Santa Monica for breakfast next morning. Ben fails to entrance her with the description of his great website idea over breakfast at the ultra-trendy Swingers, 802 Broadway at Lincoln Boulevard. At the risk of tempting fate – it's still thriving.

Discovering that the single night of passion has resulted in pregnancy, Alison naturally calls Ben to meet up. Ben reacts unfavourably to the news in a restaurant uncomfortably close to where they first hooked up, Geisha House, 6633 Hollywood Boulevard at Cherokee Avenue. It was next door to Mood – erm, MyStudio... whatever... but after nine years of success, it's no more.

Ben’s father (Harold Ramis) takes the news rather better over a meal at the Original Pantry, 877 South Figueroa Street, downtown. Previously seen in unlikely Wim Wenders-Mel Gibson bizarro misfire The Million Dollar Hotel, this LA institution has been open continuously since 1924, and has stood on this particular site since 1950.

On their next meeting, Ben and Alison begin to get on a little better. How could they not in Italian restaurant Miceli’s, 1646 Las Palmas Avenue, which is a couple of doors north of Element. From the bursts of flame in the open kitchen, forest of dangling Chianti bottles and full-throated operatic waiters, the whole theatrical experience has seen Miceli’s thrive long enough to lay claim to be Hollywood’s oldest Italian restaurant. Don’t miss.

By the way, you can glimpse the restuarant interior again in The Terminator.

Well into the whole baby thing, the couple go shopping for baby stuff in Paseo Colorado, 280 East Colorado Boulevard, at North Garfield Avenue in Pasadena while, back in the Valley, Debbie offers to buy them a crib at Baby Town, 18725 Sherman Way, Reseda.

The ramshackle record store, where Pete crushes Ben’s dreams when he casually mentions the already-existing Mr Skin website, was Record Surplus, 11609 West Pico Boulevard, just south of Exposition Boulevard and west of the 405 Freeway in West LA, one of the largest sellers of used CDs and vinyl, DVDs and VHS cassettes on the West Coast. Claiming to hold more than 100,000 items in stock, Record Surplus is still operating but has moved to 12436 Santa Monica Boulevard.

The boys bond with laddish movie references as Alison and Debbie look on with puzzlement, back once again in central Hollywood. And again there’s a change of name. Then the Sterling Steakhouse, it became Green Door (discreet, virtually unmarked – and very exclusive), at 1429 Ivar Avenue. This too has closed.

Ben and Pete commiserate with each other and hit on the great idea of driving out to Las Vegas in pool bar Del’s Saloon, another all-change, it’s no longer Del’s but Mom’s Bar, 12238 Santa Monica Boulevard, in West LA.

In Vegas, Ben and Pete stay at the Aladdin Resort and Casino – now Planet Hollywood, 3667 South Las Vegas Boulevard (where Kevin Spacey finally gets his dues in Robert Luketic’s 21), and unwisely experience the visual excesses of Cirque du Soleil after consuming magic mushrooms at Treasure island, 3300 Las Vegas Boulevard.

Alison (surprisingly graphically) gives birth to a daughter at Valley Presbyterian Hospital, 15107 Vanowen Street in Van Nuys, and all is well.

The couple finally drive off along the California Incline, alongside Palisades Park in Santa Monica, to join the Pacific Coast Highway heading north towards Malibu.

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