Re-View: The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

“If, having reached the age of forty, you still find yourself despised by others, you will remain despised to the end of your days.”

Confucius, The Analects, Book 17 Verse 26

To be a virgin at a later age confers a certain stigma on a man. I can think of no apt metaphor then the stock market. If you consider a person like you would a share of stock in a company, your view of the value of such a person is not only based on what features that are generally important, the fundamentals, but also the company’s reputation with the public. So a blue-chip stock, though perhaps overvalued in terms of fundamentals, is a safe bet if only because other people already find it valuable. Whereas a penny stock, though perhaps underrated based on fundamentals, is to be avoided because everyone else is avoiding it. And if people follow the herd when they buy/sell stock, you can bet that they do it even more so when picking romantic partners. After all, who you are romantically attached with confers a certain status. A male virgin, let’s be honest, is clearly not valued by the general populace, and although he may be underrated in terms of fundamentals (maybe, or maybe not. Maybe there is a good reason why he is avoided), what does it say about the purchaser to be rooting around in the bargain bin in the first place. I mean, right? You know?

You will see this play out in the most innocuous of ways in all sorts of movies. For instance, in The Notebook, during that time period when Ryan Gosling is estranged from Rachel McAdams, the movie takes pains to make clear that he is still having sex with other women. It is important to show that he is capable of finding women that will have sex with him. This is important to his appeal.

(The above analysis applies more to men than women. A woman that remains a virgin promises exclusivity, which is a prize to the preternaturally jealous male mind.)

This sense of stigma is what Writer/Director Judd Apatow sought to explore in his first feature The 40-Year-Old Virgin. According to the audio commentary, it is based in part of Judd’s own experience of a multi-year self-imposition of virginity after multiple poor sexual performances on his part. That sense of shame forms the underlying base of an emotionally honest but also crude and very funny movie. Steve Carell, in his first starring performance as a male romantic lead (at the age of 43), is Andy, the titular virgin. In a sneakily great performance, he at once combines the self-conscious terror of his shame with the frustration of not having any idea what to do about it. Invited to a poker night with his fellow employees at a local electronics retailer, he tries to bluff his way through an exchange of dirty stories but gives up the game when he describes a woman’s breast as akin to a bag of sand. On the spot, his fellow employees (played by Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, and Romany Malco) decide it is their mission to get Andy laid. Andy has the look of a deer in the headlights, scared witless but unable to avoid the primal forces of nature about to engulf him.

What follows is a trial-and-error journey through several layers of bad advice. It is taken as a given between the employees that the first time will be full of bad sex, so Andy shouldn’t waste it on someone he cares about. Romany Malco suggests he picks up a drunk woman. Although this could conceivably work, it doesn’t consider Andy’s generally upstanding character. After all, if he was the type of person who would or could screw a woman under the influence, he wouldn’t still be a virgin. Seth Rogen also gives bad advice, until you consider its logical corollary, which is ultimately helpful. “Most men don’t understand how to talk to women,” he observes. He advises Andy to, “just ask questions.” This works because what a man has to do when he only asks question, is to listen to what the woman is saying. Actual good advice is given by Paul Rudd who merely confirms that sex with someone you love is a great thing that is worth the effort. Of course, the problem with Paul Rudd’s example is that the woman he is in love with doesn’t reciprocate his feelings.

Ultimately, Andy succeeds with Trish (played by Catherine Keener, aged 46 in 2005), a woman with her own stigma. Trish is a grandmother. That is, she had a child when she was about 20 years old who just had a child at the time of the movie. This is a stigma for women (not men) because of the previously mentioned prize of exclusivity. Regardless of stigma though, solely based on the fundamentals, both Andy and Trish are catches. They are gainfully employed, in great shape, and are generally good people. As a bonus, they do not have current substance abuse problems. It really shouldn’t be so hard for people like this to find each other. But then again, this was 2005, right about the time families and friends stopped being matchmakers but before online dating. It is not like you are about to meet either Andy or Trish in a bar.

[Spoiler Alert: Andy and Trish totally do it. In what is the most old-fashioned and charming detail about this frequently crude movie, there isn’t any sex that is premarital.]

Looking back after twenty years, this movie is notable in just the sheer amount of supporting actors/actresses that someday would become movie stars. Catherine Keener was already established, but this is Steve Carell first starring role. Seth Rogen, still in his early twenties but looking as old as anyone else, and Paul Rudd would start headlining their own string of movies within a few years later. Then there are single scenes of Kevin Hart trying to buy a stereo, Jonah Hill trying to buy shoes, and Mindy Kaling at a speed-dating event. Kat Dennings and Elizabeth Banks (in a thankless role) are here in supporting roles as well. Good ensemble movies have a way of boosting the careers of everyone involved in them.

This was the directorial debut of Judd Apatow and it came in the early part of a string of produced/directed movies that would establish him as the most reliable force of comedy between 2004 and 2011. He went on to direct Knocked Up and Funny People in that time, produced Will Ferrell’s Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers, early Seth Rogen, James Franco, and Jonah Hill movies like Pineapple Express and Superbad, and finally, the great Bridesmaids in 2011.

One of the hallmarks of these movies is the room given to the actors for improvisation. This was part of an early 2000s trend (see also Christopher Guest and Curb Your Enthusiasm) that set up a scene on the page but gave actors the ability to just spit out lines on the spot. The B-Roll from these takes would become special features in the DVD or the basis of an unrated director’s cut that was always inferior to the movie originally seen in the theater. (What movie wouldn’t be worse if you added 10 minutes of jokes not good enough to be in the original cut), Some actors are much better at this than others. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, when an actor is trying to improvise comedy, they just say the most obscene thing that comes to mind. There is an Indian character named Mooj in this movie (played by Gerry Bednob) that can’t seem to do anything but spout foul language and tell people to fuck goats. Much better is the improvisational master class given by Jane Lynch as Andy’s boss. She keeps her lines understated and tells stories, like the one about being seduced as a girl by her household’s Guatemalan gardener. After 20 years, Jane Lynch is much funnier that Gerry Bednob in this movie.

Also, a few more items that we may notice while looking back:

1. You can’t call and just hang up anymore. We have universal Caller I.D. 

2. That “We Sell Your Stuff on Ebay” store, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

3. Andy’s advice not to buy a new VHS machine is spot on. 

4. Finally, and I suspect this has always been true: Sex, it is a great thing. And Love, arguably the best.

My original review may be found here: https://maxsminimoviemagazine.blogspot.com/2010/10/40-year-old-virgin-092105.html

One Battle After Another (4/5 Stars)

For the first fifteen minutes of this movie, I wasn’t sure what year this movie was taking place in. The setting seemed vaguely contemporaneous, but the characters and their actions seem to exist in the 1960s-1970s. We are introduced to a domestic terrorist outfit called the French 75. Leonardo DiCaprio plays their bomb expert. The main baddie is Perfidia Beverly Hills, played by Teyana Taylor. They stick up banks and declare that the money is being used to fund black liberation and civil revolution. What they lack in a coherent plan is made up for with narcissistic delusions of grandeur.

It doesn’t take more than fifteen minutes of screen time before reality sets in. The United States Government, led by Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (played by Sean Penn), arrests if not assassinates most of them. As Perfidia is being wheeled away in shackles, the arresting officers take out their smart phones and take selfies with her. And that is how I finally understood that this was taking place post-2007. Which is ridiculous when you think about it. Because no matter how crazy you believe our politics presently is, it still isn’t as crazy as it was in the 1960s-1970s when you had real domestic terrorists bandying about the country planting bombs (Weather Underground), engaging in shooting matches with the local police (Black Panthers), and sticking up banks (Patty Heart’s Symbionese Liberation Army).

The details of terrorism morph over time. Like criminals in general, terrorists live on the cutting edge of technology and infrastructure. In the mid-20th Century, the new interstate highway system and the arrival of civilian air travel allowed criminals to complete their activities and escape with unprecedented speed and distance from traditional authorities. The government took some time to catch up, but they did, which is why we no longer have such a scourge of serial killers and international terrorists. The new frontier today is in cyberspace, but “One Battle After Another” is stuck in the past. I am informed that Writer/Director Paul Thomas Anderson adapted this screenplay from a 1990 book by Thomas Pynchon titled “Vineland”. That would make sense, because the conceit of the movie would play much better if the prologue had taken place in the 1970s and the rest of the movie took place at the turn of the nineties.

Still here we are. Countering the 1970s vibe of leftist extremists, we are introduced to a very Reaganesque vibe of right-wing conspirators. They call themselves the Knights of St. Nicholas, gather in expensive tunnels beneath a California suburb, and seem to concern themselves solely with fighting the equally fictitious French 75. Col. Steven J. Lockjaw is presented with an opportunity to join this fabled league of white supremacists but encounters a difficult problem with a background check. You see, Col. Lockjaw had an affair with Perfidia Beverly Hills and the child she bore around the time of her arrest, could either be his or Leonardo DiCaprio’s. If it is his, he will have to dispose of this child. If not, well, its not that big of a deal, but I think the plan is to kill her anyway.

As is usual in the USA, the idiocy of delusional left-wing extremists fuels the excesses of the more formidable and much better funded right-wing kind. If the French 75 create an annoyance akin to a housefly, the Knights of St. Nicholas provoke a solution akin to swatting the same with a baseball bat. Col. Steven J. Lockjaw creates a false emergency to utilize his military force to infiltrate a small town in Northern California to search for his potential daughter, now about sixteen years old, named Willa (played here by Chase Infiniti). Colonel Lockjaw uses the army – not a SWAT Team, not a cadre of FBI agents – to search for a private citizen. He interrupts the prom of a local high school with a squadron of soldiers armed with assault rifles. Then he detains and interrogates the children to find Willa. (A very good performance is given by James Ratterman as the main army interrogator. He has very good screen presence and I was not surprised to learn that he is not an actor. He is an actual retired army interrogator.)

This is an extraordinary crime and fuels a chase around Northern California in which the French 75 abduct Willa to save her from Lockjaw, who relentlessly chases after her, all the while Leo DiCaprio tries to find his daughter and save her from everybody else. Meanwhile, the false emergency concerns an underground trafficking pipeline of illegal immigrants from Mexico. This pipeline is conducted by Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (played by Benicio Del Toro) who moonlights as a karate instructor while upstairs/downstairs of his dojo illegal immigrants sleep on mats. With all the crazy Americans on both extreme sides of the political spectrum around, Benecio Del Toro has done well to immerse himself in the calming stoicism of eastern philosophy. I am reminded of the hustler in Sean Baker’s “Prince of Broadway” whose illicit store on Canal Street is raided by the authorities and who, in the next scene, tells an employee to stick around because he will have something else going on in a few weeks. He just takes it in stride. I can only imagine what real illegal immigrants think of our cultural conflagrations. I presume it is not so different. After all, for every day they get to work and earn money in this country, they are playing with house money.

All these characters are well drawn, and the movie moves along at a fair clip. Del Toro and Sean Penn put in good work. Sean Penn is the type of movie star who seems to lose and gain inches of height between roles. Here he is at his shortest. Leonardo DiCaprio, more than anything, is a very good tastemaker and producer. He lends his star quality, no better or worse in this movie than in others, to get the movie made, which are always interesting stories told by very good filmmakers. He seems to be going through the list of all the best directors of his generation and will at the end have worked with most of them. I hear he will be working with Damien Chazelle next on an Evel Knievel biopic. I bet that one will be good too.

What can we say about Paul Thomas Anderson? He is one of the best moviemakers around and has quietly over a few decades has produced a kaleidoscopic portrait of California at varying times and places. (The sole exception is Phantom Thread which could exist just to confirm that P.T. could locate his movies anywhere if only he felt like it). It would have been a bit more interesting if he hadn’t changed the temporal setting of the book or at least updated the crimes and criminal outfits to fit the 21st century. For instance, there is a lot of crime being enabled by the dark web and Bitcoin. Wouldn’t it have been better if this movie was about that sort of criminal network. But maybe we don’t quite understand how that works yet. There isn’t that clarity that comes only with hindsight.