One of the strangest “road” pictures to come along in a long time — perhaps eons — is Year One. Jack Black and Michael Cera play a couple of inept hunter-gatherer cavemen, Zed and Oh, respectively, who are banished from their tribe and wind up in biblical times with the likes of Cain, Abel and Abraham, eventually ending up in Sodom.

Although Year One has its share of funny moments, much of the humor is sophomoric with an emphasis on toilet humor and sex.

It was co-written and directed by Harold Ramis, whose career has had its ups — Caddyshack, Groundhog Day, Analyze This, the scripts for the Ghostbusters movies — and downs — Bedazzled, Analyze That. Put Year One in the latter category. Ramis even rummages through his past, resurrecting and redoing the funniest scene from Caddyshack — the one where Bill Murray removes what looks like an odious object from the bottom of a swimming pool, picks it up, takes a bite and declares it to be … just a Baby Ruth candy bar. The audience was in hysterics back in 1980. In Year One, Zed picks up something odious looking on the trail, takes a bite and declares it to be … well, you can guess the rest. The audience this time was left groaning.

Year One begins amusingly enough, however, as Zed and Oh, through a series of misadventures, burn down part of their village and are sent away for everyone’s good. But soon the plot loses steam as it’s caught up in Old Testament revisionism. In a nod to the Adam and Eve tale, Zed takes a bite of a golden apple from the Tree of Forbidden Fruit to gain all the knowledge the world has to offer. He announces that he can now see “10 minutes into the future.” Although a giant yellow snake then appears and wraps itself around Oh’s neck, the scene, like too much of the rest of Year One, goes not much of anywhere.

Soon after, the boys witness the murder of testy Abel by his equally argumentative brother Cain (David Cross), something that’s used as a sort of jumping off point for further adventures. Cain keeps turning up to bedevil the boys throughout the rest of the movie, trying to pin Abel’s murder on them, even as they all drift on toward Sodom.

But the murder itself — laboriously dragged out to the nth degree, isn’t nearly as funny as the cast apparently thinks it is. Nor is a follow-up scene in which Cain’s father, Adam (Ramis himself), offers his daughter for the night to Zed, as is the local custom, and she confesses to the befuddled caveman that she is a lesbian. Rather than surprising us with daffy situations, Year One often seems awkward and straining for laughs, such as a rambling discussion by Abraham (Hank Azaria) about his plan to circumcise all the guys.

Black’s Zed is a character who thinks he has the answers to every problem, the Ralph Kramden of the caveman set. Of course, most of his plans get turned upside down, although generally things turn out all right in the end. The role doesn’t make many demands on Black. He’s always upstaged by the underplaying Cera, who has mastered the role of the timid schnook who is always too timid to make a play for the girl he loves, forever worrying about where he has gone wrong. He’s a Year One Woody Allen. Eventually he finds the nerve to ask the girl he likes for a date, but she has been sold into slavery. “When do you get off?” he asks. To which she replies, “Never. I’m a slave.” His nervous frustration at never getting to first base is what makes the character so appealing and reachable, especially for younger people in the audience who may feel just as frustrated when it comes to the opposite sex.

Cera’s flat, matter-of-fact delivery plays into his talent for dropping funny lines offhandedly, giving them a chance to percolate and sneak up on you after a second’s reflection. He shines, literally, in a later scene when he’s painted gold to be a living statue at an orgy where he’s pursued by the High Priest of Sodom (a too-silly, swishy Oliver Platt, who has been signed to play Buddy Cianci if Michael Corrente’s The Prince of Providence ever gets off the ground). These scenes aim for below-the-belt humor, but like too much of Year One, the script is a scattershot affair that more often leaves one aghast rather than amused.

**Year One

Starring: Jack Black, Michael Cera, Oliver Platt, David Cross, Hank Azaria, Vinnie Jones, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Juno Temple, June Diane Raphael, Olivia Wilde, Matthew Willig.

Rated: PG-13, contains violence, profanity, adult themes.

mjanuson@projo.com