The 40 Year-Old Virgin Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)August 16th, 2005
THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
Successful comedy is much less about the script than it is the delivery. In THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Romany Malco and Seth Rogen play four guys who work together at a Best Buy-type of electronics store. Like four stand-up comics who've been honing their act together for years, they show just the right sense of comedic timing. The result is a film with few really big laughs but a long stream of good ones. When the audience isn't laughing, it's just catching its breath.
If a film establishes a sufficient rapport with its viewers, they will ignore some of the obvious flaws, which, in THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, include a supporting cast with a propensity to speak too lowly and without proper enunciation so that some good lines are almost impossible to decipher. (Our audience laughed at these too, figuring, probably correctly, that they must have been funny.)
Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell) is a dorky guy with a secret. He's never, ever done it. Embarrassed that he has lived a life of no sex but with lots of action figures to play with, he is reluctant to admit his virginity to his three co-workers. A guy who can't drive and who rides a bicycle with no less than two wide-screen rear view mirrors, Andy is caution personified.
Thankfully the movie is rated R so that the humor can have the proper level of explicitness. A PG-13 version of the story would undoubtedly have been as bland as white bread, probably Andy's favorite sandwich bread. After all, when first asked about his weekend, Andy tells an "exciting" story of how he spent three hours making egg salad, which he ended up not eating.
Most of the movie has Andy being coaxed into dating various questionable women by his buddies. Their sexual strategy for him is to date the sluttiest women he can find. Once he has the requisite number of notches in his belt, he'll be ready for a proper date. Needless to say, he tries their approach and fails miserably but humorously. Only when he finds his soul mate in a grandmother named Trish (Catherine Keener) is Andy ever happy on a date.
Whatever you do, don't leave early. The ending is off-the-wall and hilarious. On its own, it would just be stupid but in the context of the story, it's great.
THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN runs 1:50. It is rated R for "pervasive sexual content, language and some drug use" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
My son Jeffrey, age 16, gave it *** 1/2. He said that was really funny and fresh fun. He said that even though Andy was forty years old, his awkwardness spoke directly to teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, August 19, 2005. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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