So this is what passes for comedy these days?

Rating: 1/10 (5 December 2005)

The trouble with watching "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" is that you know Steve Carell is so much better than the awful material in this film. Because I've seen him be much funnier on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Then again, he was working with some of the funniest writers on TV on that show and had the luxury of playing alongside the likes of Rob Corddry, Stephen Colbert and my pick for the funniest woman in America, Samantha Bee.
What's most surprising about "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" is that it was co-written by Carell. It's the reason I went to see the film. And what a tremendous disappointment it turned out to be.
Critics gushing over this film and tossing accolades at it must so starved of good, genuinely funny comedy, that they quickly to embrace anything with even a modicum of humor. The same critics who thought this year's terrible "Fever Pitch" was funny stuff.
But this is a one-joke film and the joke runs out of steam within 10 minutes. And from there on, the writers, Carell and Judd Apatow (who also directed this embarrassment), simply keep regurgitating the same joke over and over and over and over again. Notice how many times the opening visual joke gets played in one form or another throughout the film. It doesn't get funnier simply because you keep playing it again. I don't mind scatological humor, even juvenile laughs. But the jokes need to work. They need to be funny. They just aren't here.
I sat there utterly bewildered during this film, wondering why on earth no one involved in this mess realized the film wasn't all that funny. Yes, it's sweet, at times. It tries to be heartwarming, too. But those things don't necessarily make the film good or funny.
But Carell and Apatow's idea of great humor is to have a man film his derrière or have a couple of chaps toss back and forth why they think the other is gay. The trouble is their put-downs aren't even remotely funny in the least. They're juvenile in the worst manner.
The film is riddled with interminable lulls where the story just doesn't move along. The film's sole saving grace is watching Catherine Keener try to rescue it with her inimitable charm. Unfortunately, she's not working with sub-par material; she's working with execrable material. Frankly, Keener could make the afternoon traffic report on radio sound interesting, and she does a brave, but, ultimately, wasted, attempt at trying to salvage this film.
Wasting a talented actress of Keener's caliber on material like this is a travesty. You want to see Keener in a good film? Watch "Being John Malkovich" (1999). Heck, even her small role in the Sydney Pollack political thriller, "The Interpreter," makes for better viewing than this awful picture.
Carell's a funny man. A very funny man. I loved him in "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" (2004) and his bit in "Bruce Almighty" (2003). As he's proved so often, he's good as a supporting player. "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" is his first shot as a leading man. He doesn't make a convincing one. And he won't. Not until he works with stronger, funnier scripts.
This purported comedy not only doesn't have good laughs, it's also an utter bore.