The 40 Year Old Virgin
“The 40 Year Old Virgin” is a movie that’s not always as blunt as its title. The title character Andy Spitzer (Steve Carell) is a man working in an electronic superstore stockroom. He watches “Survivor” with his elderly married couple neighbors, and deviates into every passion you’d expect of a forty year old virgin (i.e. Video games, comic books, an extensive collection of sci-fi and superhero action figures).
He’s a man immediately awkward with the most rudimentary of social situations. When Andy is invited to a late night poker game with some of his fellow employees (Paul Rudd, Romany Malco and Seth Rogan) he looks upon them with the kind of wide eyed stare you might expect from a puppy on Ritalin, speaking with the cadence you might expect from a robot trying to wrap himself around this crazy human emotion called “love”.
Eventually the conversation turns to sex, and upon hearing a less then authentic description of the feel of a breast, his co-workers surmise that Andy must be a virgin. Andy then acknowledges that his sexual history basically includes a couple near opportunities, but after that a complete and utter lack of effort. Andy in actuality is a man desperate not to have sex, feigning to be a man who’s desperate to have sex.
Mr. Carell (formerly of the Daily Show) has sturdier star shoulders then his very thin resume would seem to suggest. Mr. Carell, until now, has played a variety of hilarious but one note characters in films like “Bruce Almighty” and “Anchorman”. While he would probably be able to get away with something like that here, Mr. Carell gives us one of the most complicated comic characters we’ve seen all year.
He makes Andy Spitzer very much at home in his surgically clean kitchen, surrounded by his action figures in their original packaging (“taking them out of their package depreciates their value,” he insists). He hesitantly reaches his toes into the minefield of social interaction, experiencing everything from a drunken rendezvous to speed dating. He is met with ample opportunity from his boss insisting they could have a “special” relationship, to a woman (Leslie Mann) who promises “we can still have sex if you want,” as a sort of payback for throwing up all over him.
Mr. Spitzer, however, does not enter real danger until he encounters Trish (Catherine Keener) a proprietor of an EBay store. It’s obvious from the start that Andy really likes Trish, and as a result is that much more desperate not to have sex with her (as evidenced by his enthusiasm by her confession that she’s not ready for their relationship to become “physical”.)
Andy Spitzer is a walking case study in romantic anxiety. It’s Catherine Keener’s grace and ease that make the romantic angle of this film work so much better; that being, essentially Keener’s Trish is the woman Andy has been waiting for all his life.
The film isn’t quite as raucous as “Wedding Crashers” the season’s other triumphant adult sex comedy, and when Apatow tries (mostly through the utilization of body fluids) the efforts seem contrived. The film works best when writer/director Judd Apatow imbibes “Virgin” with the same kind of off beat suburban irreverence that has made his previous efforts (“Freaks and Geeks” and the more underappreciated but none the less worthy “Undeclared”) such resounding successes. Apatow is the rare Hollywood creation, in that he’s a jubilant chronicler of suburban life. He delights in strip malls and coffee bars. His characters have no ambition other then to make the most of their very homogenized surroundings.
In every way, “The 40 Year Old Virgin” is an off-beat joy. Mr. Carell and Mr. Apatow have a good chemistry with the material that equally matches Mr. Carell’s refreshing screen presence with Mr. Apatow’s refreshing artistic voice.