"I'm very discreet, but I will haunt your dreams"

Rating: 9/10 (19 September 2005)

It's rude, crude, and irreverent, and it's one of the best films of the year! It's the Forty Year Old Virgin, a film that is so full of gross-out gags and cheeky humour that most viewers will be aching with laughter. Together with a hilarious, acerbic script, sharp performances, great characters, and a willingness to tackle taboos, it's also a charmingly engaging love story.
Like one of the plastic-encased action figures that line his Studio City apartment, Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell) is all wrapped up. A stockroom manager at consumer electronics store, in The Valley, Andy's never learned how to drive, never had a steady girlfriend, and, at the ripe old age of 40, has never had sex. His sexual history is a chronology of embarrassing near misses. He certainly likes women; he's just a victim of circumstance.
When his brash, beer swilling colleagues David, Jay, and Cal ((lovelorn Paul Rudd, quirky Romany Malco, and rakish Seth Rogen) invite him for an after hours card game, they find out that he's never been with a woman. So they set out to rid him of his wretched virginity by helping him find a girl  any girl. They are full of stupid schemes, the point being, of course, that they are even more childishly screwed up in their relations with women than he is, and delusional as well.
Amongst the drunken girls, the partying, the dope smoking, and all the embarrassing humiliating moments, Andy meets a Trish (Katherine Keener  just wonderful!). Trish is a real woman, a laid back, middle-aged divorcée, who has been around the block a few times. She's nearly Andy's opposite, Even her job - running one of those we-sell-it-for-you-on-eBay stores - is symbolic: She spends her days trafficking in other people's unwanted goods.
So it comes as no surprise that Trish is attracted by Andy's innocence, even turned on by it - before she knows why he's so innocent. While Andy is inspired by her to finally let go of his childhood childish things, Trish, along with Andy's timid blessing, is more than happy to develop a relationship without sex for a change.
Carell so fully inhabits this role, making Andy a handsome but dorky kind of guy with a too bright smile that flashes nervously. He's is a man who has more testosterone than he knows what to do with; his over exercised chest bristles with thick, dark hair, and one can just see the sexual frustration dripping off him. But Andy's inhibitions go so deep, that he's almost sad to watch: he clings to his childhood toys for safety and closes up with a tense angst at the slightest suggestion of sex.
The romance comes alive every time Catherine Keener is on the screen. Keener has a big smile and a husky laugh, and she's such a warm charmer that it's impossible not to fall in love with her. The supporting players are spot-on and lend their own liveliness to the proceedings: both Elizabeth Banks and Leslie Mann shine as predatory women who terrify the hero, and Jane Lynch, as the tough boss at the electronics store who suddenly softens and takes a shine to Andy, is hysterical, especially when she breaks into a tender Guatemalan love song in an effort to seduce him.
Yes, it's all pretty ridiculous, and some of the scenes verge on the offensive, but the characters are played with such understated charm and extremely quick wit, and there's real chemistry between all of them.
The film has a raw, natural tone that infuses even the film's most outrageous sequences: there's the chest-waxing scene, which mixes authenticity with toilet humour, and the sex clinic workshop which touches on people's real insecurities, even as it maintains a wildly comical tone. Along the way the clever script genuinely taps into issues of masculine insecurities, male obsession, and even female attraction.
Ultimately, The 40Year Old Virgin is the story of a rather lonely, insecure, and reserved man who becomes a better lover for having been abstinent. Yet throughout Andy's journey there are arguments to be had, temperamental adolescents to be contended with, and unavoidable truths that must be revealed.
Along the way, The 40-Year-Old Virgin is mercilessly honest about all this, even as it is being ruthlessly funny. Perhaps then, the movie is ultimately an ode to the benefits of virginity, an irreverent and bawdy advertisement for the saying that "only good can come to he who waits." Mike Leonard September 05.