Add Tail Slate
to Your Site/RSS
| Blog: |
| Tail Slate |
Topics: |
| films, movies, television |
Steve Carell gets freaky with Elizabeth Banks in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
It really is the summer of the R-rated comedy, where funny is not so much animated and family-oriented as it is raunchy and lewd, and usually in poor taste. And the crass, vulgar The 40-Year-Old Virgin fits right in: It’s pervasively adult-themed, revels in its baseness, and is unflaggingly hilarious. What’s most surprising, though, is that it doesn’t take the easy route of humor through humiliation and degradation that is so common in sex romps (I’m looking at you, entire American Pie series). As the titular object of mockery, Steve Carell plays a wide-eyed guy stunted in a pre-pubescent haze of action figures and interpersonal awkwardness. The guy is a sad specimen, and we are meant to laugh, but what is more interesting than how pathetic he is how endearing he is; it’s the ample heart of the movie that makes it more than funny and actually loveable.
Andy (Carell) lives a very precise, solitary existence, working out on his ThighMaster and Gazelle (TM, both) and passing time working as a stock clerk at an electronics store and with his video games and extensive action figure collection. It’s the life that an adolescent boy would think sounded idyllic and totally cool, and an adult would deem sad. But Andy’s lonely, so when the cool kids (read: his functioning adult male co-workers) invite him to their poker game, he jumps at the chance. And accidentally letting it slip that he is, in fact, a virgin turns out to be a good thing when his new friends decide to take it upon themselves to get him laid.
And thus begins Andy’s coming-of-middle-age story. His new posse consists of a suave-but-misogynistic lothario Jay (Romany Malco), a punky horndog skater type (Seth Rogan), and David (Paul Rudd), a wounded puppy dog still obsessively reeling over an ancient breakup. They overload Andy with techniques and advice, nearly all of which go hilariously awry; he snags the interest of various women, but even that is a series of misadventures involving speed-dating and nymphomaniacal book sellers. (The highlight is certainly the waxing incident, which is palpably painful and shriekingly funny — the only thing better than Carell’s breathless strings of profanity are the reactions from his friends; priceless, each and every one.) Almost by sheer accident, Andy meets a woman who makes his heart go pitter-pat; Trish (Catherine Keener) is a bit scattered and wacky, but quite charming — and she wants to hold off on the sex part of the relationship for a while.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin hardly shies away from the humor in vulgarity; in fact, it easily tops fellow grown-up comedy of the summer Wedding Crashers in the sophomoric bawdiness arena. But there are two things that make it massively entertaining, even to someone (like me) who is rarely driven to mirth by even the most well-timed fart joke. One is that Virgin doesn’t expect to be funny just because it’s raunchy, but instead offers up relatively intelligent, clever humor… that is based around porn and boobs and macho homophobia. The other is the oddly heartfelt nature of the film. It’s nothing warm and fuzzy, but both writer/director Judd Apatow (the mind behind TV’s Freaks and Geeks) and co-writer Carell clearly have a great affection for Andy. He’s awkward and dorky, sure, but he also catches on pretty quickly when he’s given a chance, and he’s genuinely likeable. And Virgin doesn’t take the predictable route of looking for punchlines in humiliation. Andy goes through some embarrassing tribulations, and they’re played for laughs, but his friends are genuinely trying (often ineptly) to get him some booty, not to set him up, so there is nothing mean-spirited to the comedy. It’s almost novel, in this day of laughs via schadenfreude.
Carell, already one of the best ensemble players in the business (as his former gigs on The Daily Show and as part of Anchorman’s news team can attest), proves himself to be an equally capable leading man; he knows when to go all out and when to be understated and endearing, the kind of comic timing that can’t be taught. And he’s got some truly stellar supporting comedians himself. The standouts are Rudd, funny when he goes off the deep end but simply brilliant at the underrated art of the reaction shot, and Jane Lynch, Andy’s store manager who expresses some uncomfortably prurient designs. But these are just two in a uniformly great cast of large and small players, some of whom are onscreen barely longer than it takes to crack a joke and still threaten to steal the scene.
It’s almost surprising how truly good a no-holds-barred, crass sex comedy can be these days, but The 40-Year-Old Virgin pulls it off. It’s got a big heart and an even bigger sense of overgrown adolescence about it, but in the end, it’s pretty much just hysterical. And that’s what makes it some of the most guilt-free fun of the summer.
Share on Facebook
- 
-