This Is 40 (2012)
Directed by Judd Apatow
Pete and Debbie are both about to turn 40, their kids hate each other, both of their businesses are failing, they're on the verge of losing their house, and their relationship is threatening to fall apart.
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What critics compared This Is 40 to
The ostensible self-absorption of the characters in this new movie written and directed by Judd Apatow (the comedy writing and producing dynamo whose other feature directorial credits are " The 40-Year-Old Virgin ," " Knocked Up " and " Funny People ") will rub some people harder the wrong way than maybe some others.
It also happens to be his most fully realized: Less high-concept than "Funny People," "Knocked Up" or the similarly titled "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," Apatow's script simply charts the progress of everyday family life over the course of an eventful three-week period, in which Debbie (Mann) and longtime husband Pete (Rudd) both kiss their 30s goodbye.
While Judd Apatow has become a major filmmaking voice over the last decade, thanks to hit movies he both directed (“The 40-Year-Old Virgin”) and produced (“Bridesmaids”), “This Is 40” qualifies as his worst film yet, and not even supporting turns from reliable Apatow mainstays like Jason Segel and Melissa McCarthy can save it.
There is a downside to that process, too, and it crops up in "This Is 40" in the same way it did in Apatow's "Funny People," or "Knocked Up," or "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."
There is, of course, the ignominy of having reached that milestone without having had sex in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), and in Funny People (2009), his most recent film, Adam Sandler’s loathsome superstar was defined primarily by his inability to have achieved anything of personal or artistic merit by his 40s.
With his latest film the writer/director behind Funny People and The 40-Year-Old Virgin takes another premeditated step toward the lyrical, insightful character studies of an Alexander Payne or a James L. Brooks – complicated, multi-tiered dramedies about recognizable individuals standing at a crossroad.
Add in a few F-bombs and improvised comedy bits repeating obscure pop-culture references ad nauseam and Instant Family could easily find a home in the Apatow canon alongside Knocked Up and This Is 40.
…even more pinpoint than Judd Apatow’s (lame and overlong) This is 40…
Both have a propensity for making comedy with heart – Apatow with This is 40 and Showalter with Hello, My Name is Doris – but neither have quite been associated with a movie that does it such a profound manner as this.
This is a feature of Apatow’s films (Knocked Up, This is 40), which are unfailingly honest about the ups and downs of marriage.
“The Big Sick” is a Judd Apatow production, and like a number of movies he’s been involved with over the years (“ Funny People ,” “This Is 40”), it goes on a tad longer than it should.
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Much of Apatow’s work skews more towards the work of James L Brooks than Mel Brooks, with films like This is 40 and Funny People showing Judd being more comfortable playing in the realm of drama more than comedy.
Like earlier Apatow efforts such as Knocked Up , This is 40 , and Funny People , it’s about a stunted man-child’s journey through several life situations and the emotional growth (or lack thereof) that results.
It also makes sense that the project was helmed by director Judd Apatow, who often uses comedy as a vehicle to examine how we cope not with life’s biggest moments, but with its daily grind (see: Freaks and Geeks, This is 40 , and Funny People ).
Nor are there many of the left-field touches that have made Apatow comedies stand out from the studio assembly line (Jane Lynch's Guatemalan love song in The 40-Year-Old Virgin ; Charlyne Yi's bizarre klepto confession in This Is 40 ; whatever Tilda Swinton was doing in Trainwreck ).
The seemingly semi-autobiographical This is 40 caught up with Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (Apatow’s wife) as they wrestled with parenting, professional lives and maturing.
While the modern kidulthood film may flirt with the horrors of ageing ( Old School , This Is 40 ), it equates sobriety and dignity with pathetic emasculation.
TO AN OUTSIDER, the rites and customs of heterosexual courtship and marriage, at least as depicted and dissected in several different genres of popular culture from the past decade or so—talk shows, advice books, most romantic comedies, several Judd Apatow productions, particularly This Is 40 (2012)—can appear unremittingly, if unintentionally, pathological.
Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf once played the token humans in these films, but Fox has gone on to establish herself as a credible screen performer (Passion Play, This Is 40), while LaBeouf has just gone nuts.
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Whereas "telling the truth" has been turned into a gag in most of this century's parenthood movies – consider the hilarity of Bad Neighbours , This is 40 and its ilk, where no one has sex anymore and when they do go out and get drunk, they embarrass themselves – Tully takes a different tack by focusing on the minutiae of motherhood.
Shy virgin Kenny gets some amusing coaching on how to romance the Fitzgeralds' equally bashful daughter (Molly Quinn), while the funniest stuff stems from a misunderstanding that initiates an almost-group encounter among the four adults that has Hahn doing to Aniston what Leslie Mann did to Megan Fox in This Is 40.