The Best Comedy of the Year!!!

Rating: 10/10 (17 August 2005)

Judd Apatow and Steve Carell, we'll be seeing their names for a long time, but right now, after highly praised but little seen cult TV Series (Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared for Apatow) and supporting roles in big comedies (Brick in Anchorman, The Daily Show for Carell), they team up to write, and one directs and the other stars in The 40 Year Old Virgin, the Best Comedy of the Year. And yes, I loved Wedding Crashers too.
Like that Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson laugh fest, the movie is rated R and thank God they're making a comeback after way too many PG-13 stuff. Rob Schneider's Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo didn't make money but at least it made great use of its rating, and Apatow and Carell do too.
Carell stars in the as Andy, a middle age electronics store clerk who's never had sex. Ever. He tried when he was younger, but after some disastrous attempts he just gave up. It was less humiliating to just forget about it than to keep his hopes up that it may actually happen one day. So he now runs from women and spends his nights watching Survivor with his old neighbor, playing online video games or playing with his many, many toys. He also never learned how to drive a car so he drives a bicycle to work everyday. Paul Rudd (Brian Fantana in Anchorman), Romany Malco and Seth Rogen (he's been in everything Apatow) costar as Andy's coworkers who find out about his situation. How they find out is great, during a night of poker they are telling each other's sex stories and when it's Andy's turn he gives one of the most pathetic tales ever told, and they quickly catch that he's a virgin. They love it though, and decide it's their new job to get him laid. Of course, they tell everybody they know about it.
I won't give out the rest of the story away because there are lots of hilarious situations including a kinky library worker from next door played by Elizabeth Banks, Katherine Keener is also there as Andy's potential love interest Trish (don't worry, the love story doesn't get cheesy) and there's also David Koechner (Anchorman's Champ) who shows up for a scene in which Andy takes Trish's daughter to a sex clinic of some kind for kids who have answers about sex, and it ends up with Andy asking more questions than her.
But one of the absolutely funniest scenes ever is the waxing scene shown briefly in the trailer. You could tell that it was all real pain because his screams were so authentic and you could see it in the other actors' faces that they were not in character, they were really laughing at the situation. And then the blood on his chest. It was really great.
Apatow is a genius and he knows how to write comedy. The situations in the movie are real and the dialogue is hard core, and at times it sounds like it's too much, but is not, that's what those characters would say in those situations. And lots of stuff besides the waxing scene was improvised and so everything looks very natural and so the laughs are truly non-stop. Steve Carell almost stole the show in Anchorman, rules The Office and after this role, he's sure join the elite group of movie comics that Will Ferrell currently tops. Sadly, Ferrell doesn't make an appearance here so there's no Channel 4 News Team reunion but the movie doesn't need it, because again, The 40 Year Old Virgin is the Best Comedy of the Year.