40 Year Old Virgin
Sometimes a successful movie can come out that while being good in and of itself, can set off a wave of really bad movies that try to replicate its success (usually with the same actors to varying degrees) only to show that many of those elements that made the initial film work were best left there as well. This film from 2005 is a tiny bit deceptive in its advertising, making one think that it centers around the title character as played by Steve Carell when really it boasts a quartet of leads that consist of (along with Carell) Paul Rudd, Seth Rogan and Romany Malco who are all a group of buddies working in a Best Buy type electronics store (complete with a Michael McDonald concert DVD always blasting away which actually was the standard operating procedure for Best Buys at the time). As said, the film set off a series of unfunny followups desperately trying to replicate the quality of this film but instead what we got were several doses of Carell playing the same awkward nerd type in one “deep” comedy after another and worse, Rogan doing his alpha male Jewish guy schtick ad nauseum for years to come. The exception is probably Rudd, who paid his dues on the comedy circuit before graduating to comic book hero status as Ant Man. For a wild and crazy sex comedy, it’s awfully talky, but that must have been the purposeful intent by director Judd Apatow, encouraging his actors to adlib and talk on camera endlessly hoping to have it all come together in the editing room. Carell plays the aforementioned Virgin of the title (despite being married with two kids at that time in real life), a proudly overgrown kid who traipses around his apartment admiring his massive action figure collection (including The Six Million Dollar Man’s BOSS, a real rarity) and other symbols of certified dork credibility. When he goes to work at his electronics store, we see that his co workers engage in daily activity that would get them fired in real life including loudly using profanity, talking about sex openly, threatening each other (including using racial epithets) and mouthing off at their boss (Jane Lynch). One night, they invite Carell to stay after work with them and play a game of cards, although the real purpose seems to be to pry into his personal life (or lack thereof). The irony that comes out during this first of many long dialogue scenes in the movie is that the other three guys (Rudd, Rogan, and Malco) who have all been sexually active are far more miserable and insecure than Carell has ever been, while Carell only spills the beans after failing to come up with any good (fake) stories about his sexual exploits, but the interesting character development here is with the others, as Malco (the black guy of the group) has a longtime girlfriend whom he regularly cheats on, Rogan is the laid back pothead who has plenty of stories of scoring with women yet we never see any woman show an interest in him until the very end of the movie and Rudd is perhaps the most interesting of the group, a guy still pining over his ex girlfriend whom he broke up with two years ago and thus refusing to show any interest in the opposite sex since, making him almost as repressed as Carell himself (and also the most understanding of his plight). Of course, the revelation of Carell’s purity quickly becomes known by everyone at the electronics store including Lynch (who uses it as a reason to try and hook up with him) and the two Indian employees on the sales floor who always seem to be talking shit. As a result, the guys decide to take it upon themselves to get Carell out there and try to get him laid while obviously also seeing it as being an excuse to have some fun themselves. And thus begins the quest as Carell meets a few crazies on the dating scene including ones played by Leslie Mann and Elizabeth (hottest girl in the movie) Banks before deciding that he really likes the lady who works across the street at the Ebay Store (Oscar nominee Catherine Keener). But even then the tension mounts as once it’s established that he’s involved with her, his friends still continue to give him (bad) advice which sounds mostly like stuff that they made up off the top of their heads. The film does succeed in capturing the zeitgeist of that time as we were wading through the start of the new millennium and the dating scene was getting more and more unpredictable and even legitimately dangerous which led to many people thinking and talking about sex (as these characters do) rather than actually engaging in it. Eventually we saw the rise of the male BFFs, the shrewd girl’s alternative to the hassle of having a relationship where she would gather 4 or 5 pathetic, lonely guys into her life and then have them take her out on various “friend” dates where he would still pay her way and cover her tabs as a “gentleman” would all while knowing that she will laughingly never allow him into her bedroom (with rare exceptions) because after all, the only thing you are to her is just a “friend”, which makes the idea of Carell living in his own video game and action figure world seem rather enviable in comparison. The film scores on most of its levels except for that abundance of (mostly improvised) dialogue of which there is so much of that when we finally do get to a musical montage it’s like a relief to the senses. The feeling we get is that the actors were riffing so much in character that they were throwing anything and everything they could think of out there hoping that it would stick and while a great deal of it does, much of it does not as well, literally showing us the signs of comic desperation (over a 2+ hour movie) as we as viewers try to hang in there and wait for the next inspired moment to come along which thankfully we usually don’t have to wait too long for. Whether it’s Carell calling a special hotline because his virgin penis (keeping in mind that he does NOT masturbate either) has been erect for more than four hours and speaking to an Indian operator about how to get it down or riding with a drunk girl driving who falls asleep behind the wheel (since he rides a bicycle and does not own a car) and causes both of them to nearly meet their deaths while he panics, this is a film with just so much material in it (all of which is built out of the actor’s performances of their characters) that patience is the key in the race to avoid boredom. In the end, the film deftly portrays the various insecurities and hangups that most single men have in their existence (with the exception of Keener, the female characters are mostly portrayed as space aliens who are impossible to understand) which leads to their fear of being alone and DEFINITELY to many of them becoming male BFFs, happily paying the tabs for women whom they will probably never fuck but at least they’re involved with something, anything, especially if that woman has successfully brainwashed them into something akin to that being of a state of worship. In that sense, Rudd probably comes off as the funniest here (besides Carell) with his constant agonizing and moaning over his ex girlfriend that it seems will never end as Rudd himself scores some points in making it funny in just how his opinions towards her always change from scene to scene based almost entirely on his mood at that given moment while Rogan does his usual blustery bits where he does a lot of talking but never seems to have anything to show for it while Malco (when he’s not getting into politically incorrect arguments with his Indian co workers or an African American customer) at least appears to get the most action while always conspiring to keep it from his steady girlfriend. But it is Carell who does shine the brightest here in selling the character and the concept to a tee and his scenes and chemistry with Keener are so sweetly done that the usual veneer of nastiness that permeates much of the film seems to temporarily lift during their scenes together. The big point of the film lies in Carell losing that pesky virginity of his and who it is that he will lose it to, whether it be Keener or the number of other distractions thrown his way (as we also wonder whether or not his motley group of friends will ever get laid also even if they’re not necessarily virgins themselves) all while several of these actors hit their career peaks right here and would never again play roles in movies as good as these (or at least as well presented as these since their lack of versatility would be exposed in the years to come). Meanwhile, we still have this rare modern comedy classic that makes us men look at ourselves in ways that are scathing, insightful and actually pretty funny…
8/10