A Geek Gets Freaky: Judd Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
Written: Aug 22 '05 (Updated Feb 17 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Steve Carell is officially a star; great supporting turns; hilarious yet surprisingly sweet.
Cons: Some dry patches, which are par for the course in movies like this anymore.
The Bottom Line: THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN is as hilarious as anything that's come out of Hollywood in years, but it also has a warm, unironic romance and some relevant observations.
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| hkoreeda's Full Review: The 40 Year Old Virgin |
The title of the new film THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN doesn’t inspire much hope in a viewer. Not only is it one of those Captain-Obvious titles that boils down the film’s concept into one easily-packaged phrase, but it seems designed to make most the majority of audience members feel superior to the titular virgin (“haw haw! He ain’t got none yet! Loser!”). It’s a pleasant surprise then that the film manages not only to be funny, but also portrays its protagonist warmly and without condescension.
Given the lifestyle lived by Andy (Steve Carell), this is no easy feat. Andy lives alone in an apartment, surrounded by all manner of “geeky” paraphernalia- fantasy posters, trophies from childhood, a “gaming chair”, and shelf after shelf of action figures, most of which are still in their original packaging. His idea of being sociable is watching SURVIVOR with his elderly neighbors- “I’ll bring the soda!” he chirps. He rides a bicycle (even signaling his turns) instead of driving, and still works as a stock boy at Smart Tech, an electronics emporium similar to Circuit City, where his work mates kind of shy away from him because of his social awkwardness. They wonder whether he might be a serial killer.
This begins to change when the guys are in need of a fifth for their weekly poker night, and Andy is invited to tag along. As the night draws to a close, the other guys have downed a good amount of alcohol (Andy sticks to Fanta), and begin to talk about sex. For a while, Andy is able to play along, occasionally responding with a “yeah” or a “I know what that’s like!” But when the conversation turns to his experiences, he’s woefully unequipped to supply a story, as when he mentions that a woman’s breasts feel like “bags of sand.” It quickly occurs to these guys that Andy is, unmistakably, a virgin.
It’s typical of the film’s outlook that, rather than ridiculing Andy for his inexperience, the guys take it as an excuse to bond with him, beginning what is in their opinion a mission of mercy to help their new buddy get lucky with the opposite sex. It’s not that Andy is bad-looking, but after a few close calls with women that didn’t work out so well (as when he accidentally kicks a toe-sucking girl in the nose), he “just kinda stopped trying,” as he tells Dave (played by Paul Rudd). Dave, along with Cal (Seth Rogen) and Jay (Romany Malco), have a seemingly endless supply of advice for Andy to help him score with women. Some of it is fairly useful, as when Cal advises him to ask girls lots of questions in order to seem like a good listener (naturally, Andy takes the advice too literally). Some is pretty shameless, such as Jay’s encouragement to hit on drunk women in clubs in order to find girls with lowered inhibitions. And some is just bizarre, like when Cal tells Andy to “act like David Caruso in JADE”- the kind of semi-obscure reference that the movie gets exactly right.
The funny thing is that, despite their greater amount of sexual experience, the other adults in Andy’s life seems to be stuck in arrested development themselves. Dave (when he’s not watching porn) is still moping over an ex-girlfriend who cheated on him two years ago, Cal smokes dope and strikes up conversations about bestiality and games involving self-pleasure, and Jay is prone to talking about women like a gangsta rapper and cheating on his longtime girlfriend. All three of these guys exhibit the kind of homophobia common to young men who feel the need to assert their manliness. To say nothing about the store where they work, which seems better suited to college students than adults in their thirties and forties. The women Andy encounters aren’t much more mature, such as the dirty-minded Beth (Elizabeth Banks), who works at a nearby bookstore; an aging club girl (Leslie Mann) who keeps a Breathalyzer in her car; and Paula (Jane Lynch), Andy’s manager at Smart Tech, who after hearing about his “problem” propositions him with the line “I’m very discreet, but I’ll haunt your dreams.”
One day, Andy finds himself on the sales floor, where he meets Trish, played by Catherine Keener. He doesn’t have much experience as a salesman, but as he discusses the relative merits of a DVD/VHS combo player he’s able to lighten up around her. I love how Carell and writer-director Judd Apatow allow this scene to play out, since it’s obvious that Andy is intimidated by the attractive Trish, but he calms down when his mind is distracted when he’s talking about the product he’s selling. Anyway, Trish finds Andy endearing, and she gives him her business card (she runs a company that sells people’s old stuff on eBay) and her home telephone number.
In a more conventional movie this would be cause for celebration, but there are numerous complications. Andy is uneasy with the idea of calling Trish, since eventually he’ll have to tell her his secret, and he’s afraid that she’ll be put off by it. His friends also think that he should get more experience with casual flings before having sex with a woman he actually cares about. Eventually he does call and just when it appears that he’ll finally lose his virginity, Trish’s teenage daughter happens upon them, bringing the night to a screeching halt. As it turns out, Trish has three children, one of whom has a child as well, and while Andy has no problem with dating a “hot grandma,” they eventually agree to postpone sex. This puts Andy at ease for a while, but as the dates progress he becomes more and more afraid of telling her the truth.
The key to the film is Steve Carell, who also co-wrote the screenplay. Andy could have been a cliché- the dorky fantasy-loving virgin- but Carell wisely plays up Andy’s strong points. Awkwardness aside, Andy is good-hearted and kind, and he flowers under the attentions of others. It’s easy to see why a woman like Trish, who no doubt has had more than her share of experience with jerks, would be drawn to the sweet, non-threatening Andy.
Some critics have complained that Andy’s relationship with Trish lacks the comedic verve of the rest of the film, but I believe this is by design. The other people in Andy’s life cling to the vestiges of youth as much as Andy does, and when he meets Trish he’s confronted by a real, mature woman for perhaps the first time in his adult life. Trish, aside from being a partner in a meaningful relationship, represents an alternative to the arrested development of his old life. Andy faces the choice of setting aside childish things, something he’s not eager to do. The scene where Andy decides to let Trish sell his action figures on eBay is the movie’s most bittersweet.
I also liked the actors who played Andy’s coworkers. Paul Rudd (who also appeared in the Judd Apatow-produced ANCHORMAN) is shaping up as one of Hollywood’s most dependable comedic actors, and his gradual meltdown over his ex-girlfriend here is very funny. Romany Malco is a performer I’ve never seen before, but I enjoyed his wannabe-gangsta routine in this film, as well as his vulgar lessons on the art of picking up drunk girls. The real scene-stealer, however, is Seth Rogen. Rogen previously played Ken Miller, my favorite character on the classic (and Apatow-produced) series FREAKS AND GEEKS, and it’s easy to imagine Cal as being the kind of guy Ken would grow up into- stoned, sarcastic, quick with a withering and highly-inappropriate anecdote. His idea of a game provides a priceless throwaway moment.
As pleasurable as it is, THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN isn’t perfect. While Apatow (directing his first feature after making a name for himself as a producer) largely manages to avoid using montages to compress Andy’s bad experiences with women, he falls prey to it during a scene in which Andy and friends try speed-dating. While this technique might have been successful had the scene been confined to Andy’s perspective (it could underline his difficulty with women by portraying his inability to make a good impression in a short period), by cutting between the four of them the film seems to mostly be going for easy laughs rather than building the characters. I also wasn’t a huge fan of a scene in which Andy gets into a car with Leslie Mann’s drunken club girl, which plays out more like an excuse for bad-driving schtick than a realistic situation in which Andy might find himself.
I did, however, enjoy the film’s borderline-painful comedic centerpiece, in which Andy’s friends take him to get his chest hair waxed. This scene is a perfect encapsulation of the post-QUEER EYE approach to male grooming, in which it’s as necessary for a man to experience pain to become attractive as it is for a woman. Carell is a trouper in this scene- it’s really his chest hair that gets removed- and his inability to deal with the pain (at one point he asks Cal to hold his hand) is very funny. I also liked an unexpected payoff to this scene late in the film, when a girl misinterprets the missing patches of hair as being evidence of Andy’s kinkiness.
Despite the film’s problems (which are minor in comparison to the film as a whole), THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN is the best Hollywood comedy I’ve seen in years, probably since the Farrelly brothers’ highly-underrated gem STUCK ON YOU. I realize that the previous sentence probably says as much about my odd taste as it does about THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN, but never mind. What I love about both of these films is that, setting aside how hilarious they both are, both films have a serious subtextual message (VIRGIN’s deals with the inability of many adults today to grow up). And like STUCK ON YOU, THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN is smart enough to culminate with a musical number, which may not exactly be the most logical ending for a movie like this, but makes for one terrific send-off.
Recommended:
Yes
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hkoreeda
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Member: Paul Clark
Location: Ohio
Reviews written: 35
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What's the polite term for "unemployed wannabe critic"?
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