Forty Year Old Virgin, The
The 40 Year Old Virgin is a comedy with enough great talent and wicked material to generate some genuine laughs, but it comes across as an unconfident effort. Perhaps unsurprising, considering the high-concept story can be summed up simply in the film's title.
The writers of this film seem to have totally hedged their bets. They've thrown everything they can think of in the film with the notion that if you make 100 jokes at least a few have to be funny. It's the same with the story, as it initially traverses all over the place. If the speed-dating scene isn't your cup of tea, maybe you'll love the chest-waxing one. If that's too painful to watch maybe you'll laugh at the one where he pees in his own face. Something for everyone.
The film is also crammed with little funny idiosyncratic/stereotypical characters. It's almost as if they were doubting the talent of their main stars and so figured they'd stock up on scene-stealers just in case. Like all the gags here, some of them work, some of them don't.
Seth Rogan, a favourite of mine since his Freaks & Geeks days, (the film is directed by that show's co-creator Judd Apatow) is consistently amusing, and against all odds I actually found “the black friend” to be very funny, since for once “the black friend” wasn't just a guy who thinks he is a pimp and who talks like he's from the ghetto, even though the film is set somewhere like Connecticut. Paul Rudd's one-note character, a man totally obsessed over an ex-lover, is a disappointment, especially since he was one of the best things Anchorman had going for it.
It is then left to star Steve Carrell to make so much of this film very, very funny, and he does - which is a surprise considering I hate his work in the U.S version of The Office . He has such an innocence and amusing naivety, which bounces well off his foul-mouthed sex-obsessed work colleagues. Almost makes me want to give the U.S. The Office another chance…then again maybe not.
I've said it before in my Anchorman review, and I'll say it again:
Why the hell do these kinds of films feel the need to try to get a bit serious on our asses towards the end?
Fuck, fuck, fuck it pisses me off.
No one walks out of these kinds of films thinking: “Awww, thank goodness that worked out for all the characters, I'm oh so glad they will live happily ever after.”
This was a film that started with a monologue about a woman fucking a horse, for fucks sake. They should aim to end the film with the same kind of risqué laughs they've been trying to generate all film. It's even more pathetic that they tag on a musical number in the end, a la, There's Something About Mary, in an attempt to win us back over and have us walking out of the cinema with a smile.
With 30 minutes cut out of this, and a tweaked ending, this would have been a classic comedy. One of those films you go back to time and time again, watch with your mates over some beers, and end up knowing every line to. As it stands it is a film that I will pick and choose my favourite scenes to watch again, and ignore the rest.