Sunday, August 21, 2005

40 Year Old Virgin

I can't recall the last time there were two really laugh out loud comedies released in the same summer. Maybe the year Austin Powers, American Pie and South Park came out within 5 weeks of each other in the late 90's? In any case, the 40 Year Old Virgin is much like Wedding Crashers in that it plays up the raunch perfectly and has some laugh out loud moments that will shock you and possibly make you cry or pee yourself from laughing so hard.

However, also like Wedding Crashers, this movie goes on for longer than it should. Running almost 2 hours, I think the blame has to go to Judd Apatow who is used to directing television shows. A lot of extraneous scenes that don't really move the plot along or repeat the same point are kept in as if this were the first 3 episodes of a new dramedy on FOX all smushed together. On the plus side, the length of the movie actually works to give it heart. Instead of being raunchy for the sake of raunch, the movie is underneath the comedy a bizarre love story between a 40 year old who is afraid of sex and a sexy grandma.

The cast of supporting characters does a fine job of shaping out the circle of friends we all have in life. Paul Rudd plays the hopeless romantic that can't get over being cheated on by his ex, Seth Rogan is the pot smoking, grunge era cast off who talks about all the ways you need to act to get a woman but never seems to get the girl himself and Romany Malco plays the philandering homeboy who manages to teeter the line between being gross and yet accurate in his assesments of women just as he does between being a stereotype and a real person that we all know. But the real stand out here is Steve Carell as Andy the Virgin.

Carell shows a range that I'm willing to guess not many people thought he was capable of. His work on The Daily Show and now the american verison of The Office is a bit one dimensional, it's cruel comedy and he's a genius at that. In this film, Carell brings an emphatic vibe to his lovable virgin and does so without making you get too creeped out by him. Obviously Carell isn't a virgin, but capturing the subtlety of how a guy who is a 40 year old virgin would act makes you absolutely believe that he is. I realize he ain't no Merrill Streep, but I don't think a guy like Jim Carrey or David Spade or Jack Black, all very funny actors, could have made you really committ to the idea of this guy Andy being a virgin. And Carell does so with absolute ease.

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