Too Gross for Me; Very Good Carrell

Rating: 5/10 (2 January 2006)

"The 40 Year Old Virgin" Too gross for me, but the audience loved it.
Reviews, articles, and even an interview on Terry Gross' "Fresh Air" lead me to believe that this movie was a tad more adult than it is.
In fact it is a gross-out, teen-boy comedy. It opens with a graphic description of a stage show involving a horse and a Mexican girl, probably a sex slave.
It includes graphic scenes of vomit and urine being splashed in the main character's face.
Women's bodies are major sources of humor, with punchlines like, "Don't put (vulgar term for women) on a pedestal," and visual gags like a woman's breast coming out of her shirt, with the completely unlikely result that she is unaware of it and fails to cover it up.
All the male characters, no matter their chronological age, are boys. There is a lengthy scene where two unattractive men (what happened to the cute, young Paul Rudd of "Clueless"? Is he already fat and balding?) play violent video games while making homophobic "jokes." As in all the teen boy gross out comedies, from "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" to "Wedding Crashers," though these boys are terrified of homosexuals, the only "love" they are capable of feeling is for other men.
The audience I was with loved this movie. They laughed out loud in several spots; there was much more laughter than in any movie I've seen in a while -- certainly more than at "Wedding Crashers." Steve Carrell was wonderful. "The Daily Show" didn't prepare me for how much movie star charisma he has. The scene where his chest hair is removed is an instant classic, and will become a kinky favorite among some fetishists, I'm sure.
Otherwise, though ... I wasn't ready for a gross-out, teen boy, woman-hating movie, and this one left me feeling icky.
I hope to see Carrell in something a bit more grown-up and classy someday.