40 Days and 40 Nights Review
by Rose 'Bams' Cooper (bams AT 3blackchicks DOT com)March 4th, 2002
'3BlackChicks Review...'
40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS (2002)
Rated R; running time 91 minutes
Studios: Miramax Films
Genre: Comedy
Seen at: Celebration Cinema (Lansing, Michigan)
Official site: http://www.miramax.com/40daysand40nights/
IMDB site: http://us.imdb.com/Details?0243736
Written by: Rob Perez
Directed by: Michael Lehmann
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Shannyn Sossamon, Paolo Costanzo, Vinessa Shaw, Adam Trese, Michael Marrona, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2002
Review URL: http://www.3blackchicks.com/2002reviews/bams4040.html
All this while, I've been remarking on how Josh Hartnett physically reminds me of a young Tommy Lee Jones. He still does, but in 40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS, he puts me in mind of another actor: John Cusack, circa SAY ANYTHING.
Mark that in the "A Good Thing" column.
THE STORY (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**)
Matt Sullivan (Hartnett) suffered the throes of rejection from a breaking up with Nicole (Vinessa Shaw), a woman he was deeply in lust with. After failing to drown his sorrows between the legs of countless, nameless women, Matt seeks out the advice of his "priesty" brother, Brother John (Adam Trese), who's a little less than sympathetic about the cross that his sex-driven little brother has to bear. Matt's roommate and dot.com co-worker Ryan (Paolo Costanzo) isn't much more help; Ryan's sexual appetite is even stronger than Matt's.
An older priest's preparations for Lent gives Matt divine inspiration: he decides to give up sex - in all its wondrous shapes and forms, both shared and solo - cold turkey for 40 days and...well, you know. Of course, women are all the more attractive, and attracted, to the chaste Matt. Seeking refuge in another cleansing place - the local laundromat - Matt meets Erica (Shannyn Sossamon). Can he keep it up...uh, his vow of celibacy, that is...for the whole 40?
THE UPSHOT
Perhaps it's because I needed some relief just having seen the pitiful WE WERE SOLDIERS, but I found 40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS to be charming and funny: not at all the Slacker Teen Comedy that I was halfway expecting.
Only halfway, because the other half of me was hoping this movie would be as refreshing as its early trailers were. If you never saw them, the first few trailers for "4040" were inventive in that they told the audience what the story would be about, without showing a single frame from the movie itself, thus eliminating any problem in unwittingly seeing the best parts of the movie ahead of time. This of course is not the first movie to have done such a thing; I recall similar, but way more bizarro trailers, for the dreck that was JOAN OF ARC, just to name one. Unlike that crud, however, the first 40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS trailers actually made me want to go see the movie.
40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS was enjoyable, primarily as it lacked the titillation so prevalent in standard Slacker Teen Comedies. Director Michael Lehmann and writer Rob Perez seemed to have an eye and ear for capturing today's youth, without resorting to the snickering, taboo-laden sexual stereotypes found in lesser youthful comedies. I work around a lot of White male college students; they sound and act just like Matt and his friends. And the sirens of "4040" were no passive Warm Place To Put Its; these chicks knew what they wanted, and set out to get it. I like that in a skeezer.
As much as I have grown to like Josh Hartnett, it was Paulo Costanzo, as his roommate Ryan, who stole the show. Costanzo had me rollin' throughout the movie, seemingly without even breaking a sweat. As Erica, the desire of Matt's heart (amongst other things), Shannyn Sossamon was fine, though a little vacant at times (and was it just me, or did she make Hartnett look downright pale by comparison)? Adam Trese, as Matt's "priesty" brother John, played well off Hartnett; Vinessa Shaw played Nicole as the skeeziest skeezer of them all; but I think I'll have to bring up her final act in the "Spoilers!" forum on the "Viewer Voices" ™ webboard, for further discussion. The rest of the cast members were pretty much a blur; they weren't really introduced except in an off-the-cuff fashion, but they fit the bill as modern-day Chorus.
If there was anything off-kilter, it was the in-your-face product placement [hey, I love Macs too, but come on now!], the inclusion in a movie of a dot.com that hadn't turned into a dot.bomb [because Everybody Knows that all dot.coms are doomed to failure. 'Scuse me while I remove my tongue from my cheek], and the question of where the piece of film that explained why Matt and Nicole broke up in the first place, ended up. One thing I can't complain about, though, is the more or less realistic computer tech shown. I've seen more than my share of Flash pages like the ones used by Matt's company...shudder. Fortunately, the actual 40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS page isn't lame at all. Like the early trailers, the site tells its story without a lot of excess muss and fuss. I like that in a website.
BAMMER'S BOTTOM LINE
Hey, where can I find those flowers? It's for, uh, research. Really.
40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS rating: greenlight
Rose "Bams" Cooper
Webchick and Editor,
3BlackChicks Review
Entertainment Reviews With Flava!
Copyright Rose Cooper, 2002
EMAIL: [email protected]
http://www.3blackchicks.com/
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