'Knocked Up'

One improbable evening, Ben meets Alison (Katherine Heigl of "Gray's Anatomy") at a dance club. She is everything Ben is not: graceful, smartly dressed, career-oriented and (oh, yeah) slender. Doesn't matter: They get so Next morning, clarity takes hold and they both write it off as a one-night stand.

But within weeks, Ben finds out that the adage "I'll still respect you in the morning" can sometimes attach itself to many, many mornings - and afternoons and evenings. Alison is pregnant, and Ben's the only man in greater Los Angeles who could be the father. His earnest, if awkward, attempts to do pathos of "Knocked Up.

" But writer-director Judd Apatow, who teased unexpected richness out of a similar premise two years ago with "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," is after much more than showing how a Guy can force himself to become a Man. Ben's rocky passage For example, Alison's sister, Debbie (Leslie Mann, Apatow's wife), may be frighteningly no-nonsense in her household duties, but she can't quite let go of the last vestiges of her past as a party girl. Her husband (Paul Rudd, Debbie's hopes and fears.

All he can do is moan about how married life is a long, not-so-funny episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond." Even Alison, the best-equipped of anyone to act like a grown-up, cultivates her insecurities as solutions. "Knocked Up" proves to be one of the rare contemporary movie may be laughing too hard to be aware of any grand moral strategies.

But you'll KNOCKED UP (R). Judd Apatow, writer-director of "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," serves up an even richer helping of heartwarming raunchiness in this story of a slacker (Seth Rogen) struggling to do the right thing after a one-night stand leads unexpectedly to expectant fatherhood. Katherine Heigl is the woman having his baby.

With Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann. 2:09 (sexual situations, vulgarities, drug use). At area theaters.