"I'm the dude with the hot granny!"

Rating: 7/10 (8 July 2019)

There was a time when this movie was ubiquitous on a bunch of cable channels, and even then I never got around to watching it. I finally broke down the other day and took a look at it, and in a lot of ways my suspicions were confirmed. There's a lot of pandering to the lowest common denominator, but at the same time, Steve Carell makes his character likeable enough whenever he's agonizing over his love life or lack thereof, which is basically all the time. His buddies carry most of the hedonistic baggage in the story, but surprisingly, aren't as demeaning as I would have thought given the premise of the movie's title. They're actually quite supportive in Andy's (Carell) attempt to cure the problem that compounds his daily existence, while trying to deal with their own issues in affairs of the heart. I thought Catherine Keener was a well cast love interest for Carell's character; they had a nice chemistry once all the interruptions plaguing their love life fell away. It's too bad Jonah Hill didn't have a larger part than his quirky role as Trish's (Keener) persistent Ebay store customer, but this was one of his very first movie roles, so it's not surprising. With a little more experience under his belt, he would have qualified for one of Andy's poker playing pals. Over all, the movie has it's share of laughs at the expense of all those comic book and sci-fi collector nerd types, and anyone who hasn't been able to get the deed done within a reasonable time frame, forget about forty. It also adds a new word to the wide ranging alternative solution to regular sex. The writer who came up with the expression 'outer-course' deserves a bonus.