It’s tempting to undersell Harold Ramis’ “Year One,” to dismiss it as the latest so-so flick starring a member of the wildly popular Frat Pack.

After all, could a movie with a historical undertone starring Jack Black and Michael Cera be somewhat believable while remaining funny? Or better yet, could it even be funny while remaining believable?

YEAR ONE

Three stars

STARRING: Jack Black and Michael Cera

DIRECTOR: Harold Ramis

RUNNING TIME: 82 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, strong language and brief violence.

THE LOWDOWN: Two inept Neanderthals roam the ancient globe in search of love and life’s greater meaning.

The short answer is “no” to the believable part. But I suspect most audiences (especially of the younger age) will forgive Ramis and his crew for any historical inaccuracies because of the sheer crude humor that seems to infuse modern laughs into biblical settings.

Loser hunter-gatherers with appropriate names, Zed (Black) and Oh (Cera) flee their village after Zed accidentally sets it on fire in an attempt to find life’s greater meaning and, in the process, woo the charming-yet-armpit-haired Maya (June Diane Raphael).

After eating the village’s forbidden fruit ala the Garden of Eden, Zed believes he is under divine inspiration to find out what his ultimate purpose is.

If it sounds like a role a bit too philosophical for Black, take comfort in knowing that he enters each perplexing scenario with his trademark ad-lib ramblings and hilarious think-out-loud blabber.

Cera is, well, Cera. If you were a fan of his awkward yet lovable nature in “Superbad” and “Juno,” you’ll be pleased to find he painfully manages to somehow woo his gatherer-turned-slave crush Eema (Juno Temple) by story’s end. The story is reminiscent of “Superbad” not only because of the appearance of Christopher “McLovin” Mintz-Plasse as Abraham’s son, Isaac, but also because of the endless quest to fulfill the main characters’ romantic desires.

The film, to its credit, does manage to withdraw some ironic humor from biblical topics such as circumcision, homosexuality and the always-controversial city of Sodom. One might even take one of Raphael’s lines (“Who said God was a man?”), a modern-day question posed to the Neanderthal-era Zed, as contemporary commentary on the misogynistic undertones of biblical times.

But while the idea of God, or gods, is a given with the film’s characters Cain, Abel and the Israelites and Sodomites all vying for heavenly favor, Oh isn’t so sure as to the existence of the divine, especially with the mischievous Zed claiming its inspiration for himself.

But like Black’s 2003 hit “School of Rock,” the lasting message is the power of individuals to rise above their own circumstances, even if those circumstances might be a predetermined life of slavery or the limits of one’s village. As Black says it, “You all can be the chosen ones.”

And while this comedy certainly doesn’t live up to Ramis’ masterworks “Animal House,” “Caddyshack” and “Groundhog Day,” did anyone really expect it to? Few films are in that class, and, as of late, the Frat Pack has been slow to please.

But “Year One” nonetheless succeeds in that it exceeds expectations and gets you laughing through the beginning, middle and end. And it takes predictable biblical tales and makes them new with the pelvic humor some find refreshing and others find crude.

It’s a Black and Cera film with a touch of Ramis. That is, a crude film with a touch of very funny humor.