The 40 Year Old Virgin is a 2005 production from Apatow Productions. The Judd Apatow-directed movie was written by Judd in combination with the films main star: Steve Carell. Alongside Carell, we see a lot of familiar faces in the comedy scene, like Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Catherine Keener and Kat Dennings. The film also sees a few famous cameos with Jonah Hill, Mindy Kaling and Kevin Hart. The movie scores a 7.1/10 on IMDb and received a 73 Metascore.
The Story
We start at one of the film’s worse parts, the story. The idea of a 40-year-old man being a virgin is quite funny and often they found some good story points to use that perspective but if I would have to give my opinion about the story from a broader perspective it has some weird transitions and missing parts. Andy’s new relationships often felt rushed and badly fleshed out which left me a bit confused about the pacing from time to time.
I do have to give props to the ending. A true romcom ending where our main protagonist overcomes his anxieties to finally have sex with a woman, after crashing through a billboard.
The Characters
This where a movie like this, which probably means comedy movies overall, shines. The cast is filled with the best of the best in movie comedy with a great performance from Steve Carell. I did expect more from Rudd and Rogen in this film as their characters ended up a bit dull with little characteristics to make them unique. On the other hand, Malco’s Jay did make me laugh more than once and proved to be one of the better characters alongside Banks’ Beth.
The Production
I watched this movie on Netflix in 2021 where the quality seemed bad, I don’t know if that was due to Netflix, but it seemed the movies general quality was a bit below standard. Even for a 2005 production. That part of the production is also not where a comedy shines, it manages to create great value through a good script, which this movie had. The movie got me to laugh more than enough times to be dubbed one of the better comedy movies I have ever watched.