{"id":8610,"date":"2020-06-16T00:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T21:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/what-critics-said-about-the-40-year-old-virgin\/"},"modified":"2020-06-16T00:30:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-15T21:30:00","slug":"what-critics-said-about-the-40-year-old-virgin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/what-critics-said-about-the-40-year-old-virgin\/","title":{"rendered":"#What Critics Said About \u2018The 40-Year-Old Virgin\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#What Critics Said About \u2018The 40-Year-Old Virgin\u2019<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

They Said What?!<\/strong> is a biweekly column in which we explore the highs and lows of film criticism through history. How did critics feel about it at the time, and do we see it differently now? Chris Coffel explores.<\/em><\/p>\n
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Judd Apatow\u2019s<\/strong> work has been a fixture on screens big and small for the last thirty years. His sixth film as director, The King of Staten Island<\/em>, is now available on VOD services. To celebrate, we\u2019re going to take a stroll back in time and revisit his 2005 directorial debut, The 40-Year-Old Virgin<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The film, starring Steve Carell<\/strong>, Catherine Keener<\/strong>, Paul Rudd<\/strong>, Romany Malco<\/strong>, and Seth Rogen<\/strong>, served as a breakthrough for Apatow. At the time, he had established himself as a relatively successful writer, having penned script<\/a>s for Heavyweights<\/em> and Celtic Pride<\/em>. His biggest claim to fame, however, was in the world of television, where he was known for creating Freaks and Geeks<\/em> and Undeclared<\/em>, two shows that were canceled far too soon. The release of The 40-Year-Old Virgin<\/em> launched Apatow from moderate success to one of the leading names in comedy.<\/p>\n

Critics were surprised and impressed by the way Apatow took a one-joke premise that in most hands would be nothing more than a raunchy sex comedy and delivered something more with it. In his review for The Washington Post<\/em>, Michael O\u2019Sullivan<\/strong> wrote, \u201cThere\u2019s something deeper, or at least slightly different than you might expect.\u201d O\u2019Sullivan described the movie as \u201ca symphony with blue humor\u201d that\u2019s \u201cactually an excellent date movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his review for The New Yorker<\/em>, David Denby<\/strong> credited the film\u2019s success to its ability to be \u201ctruly dirty and truly romantic at the same time.\u201d Denby described the film\u2019s comedy as \u201ccoarse and obvious as a burlesque show and almost as foul-mouthed as [the documentary] The Aristocrats<\/em>\u201d but felt it was appropriately balanced \u201cwith considerable delicacy, psychological insight, and a surprising sense of detail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nathan Rabin<\/strong> of the AV Club<\/em> felt the film was essentially two separate movies<\/a>. On one hand, you\u2019ve got \u201ca raunchy, cartoonish Anchorman<\/em>-like stoner comedy,\u201d Rabin wrote, and on the other, \u201ca refreshingly adult but decidedly unfunny middle-aged romance about the fumbling courtship between a na\u00efve hero with too little experience and a frustrated single mother\/entrepreneur.\u201d Rabin felt that the film would have fallen apart if not for the \u201cskill and charm of Carell and his supporting players.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roger Ebert<\/strong> gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, calling it \u201csurprisingly insightful\u201d with \u201ca good heart and a lovable hero.\u201d Ebert praised the film for having fun with the characters in a light-hearted way intended to humanize them rather than aim for the cheap laughs. Ebert said the engine that made the film work was the duo of Carell and Keener, in large part because they share \u201ca rare kind of chemistry that is maybe better described as mutual sympathy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her review for the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, Carina Chocano<\/strong> wrote that the film \u201cwould have had the depth of a pancake\u201d had it not been for Carell and Apatow turning it \u201cinto a surprisingly sweet and funny ode to male friendship and middle-aged love.\u201d Like Ebert, Chocano felt the characters were treated with respect, saying, \u201cCarell allows Andy to be subjected to these humiliations but never to be humiliated.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the film was overwhelmingly popular amongst critics, not everyone was a fan. Lou Lumenick<\/strong> openly called himself a \u201cparty pooper\u201d for not liking the film more in his review for the New York Post<\/em>. Lumenick felt the film was one joke \u201cstretched out for nearly two hours\u201d and \u201cgarnished with yards of misogynistic, homophobic and racist quips.\u201d Lumenick did like moments of the film but ultimately concluded that Apatow \u201chas little feel for big-screen pacing and lets almost every scene run far too long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slate<\/em> critic David Edelstein<\/strong> agreed with Lumenick, calling the film \u201ctoo long, too sexist, and too\u2014shall we say\u2014flaccid.\u201d In his review, Edelstein praised Apatow and Carell for their TV work, but felt that didn\u2019t translate to movies, writing \u201cwhen brilliant TV-comedy guys do big-studio multiplex movies, they put on their stupid hats.\u201d Edelstein was amused by Rogen, however, calling him \u201chilariously matter-of-fact as he details assorted acts of sex and bestiality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Count Seattle Times<\/em> critic Moira MacDonald<\/strong> among those that felt the film was simply too long. MacDonald wrote that it \u201ccould have been a very funny 80-minute movie,\u201d but unfortunately \u201cit\u2019s trapped in a not-quite-so-funny two-hour movie.\u201d In MacDonald\u2019s eyes, the film\u2019s funniest moments were lost between too much \u201cpadding, and empty dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days, The 40-Year-Old Virgin\u2019s<\/em> reputation seems to have held up quite well for most. Ten years after the film was released, Scott Tobias<\/strong> crowned the film as \u201cthe most influential comedy in a decade\u201d in a piece for GQ<\/em>. In the article, Tobias argues that the film made comedy a \u201cblockbuster event\u201d and \u201cupended the teen-sex-comedy formula.\u201d Rolling Stone<\/em> credited the movie with creating the \u201cmodern-comic urtext\u201d for \u201cthe heavily improvised, ensemble-cast manchild farce,\u201d while placing the film ninth on its list of the 50 best comedies of the 21st century.<\/p>\n

Apatow\u2019s follow-up films have received similar praise over the years and time will tell if The King of Staten Island<\/em> joins them. But if The 40-Year-Old Virgin<\/em> taught us anything, it\u2019s that you never forget your first.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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“#What Critics Said About \u2018The 40-Year-Old Virgin\u2019” They Said What?! is a biweekly column in which we explore the highs and lows of film criticism through history. How did critics feel about it at the time, and do we see it differently now? Chris Coffel explores. Judd Apatow\u2019s work has been a fixture on screens…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1354,17789,7600,1361,1410,1412,17788],"class_list":["post-8610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-columns","tag-judd-apatow-made-his-directorial-debut-15-years-ago-with-the-40-year-old-virgin-we-take-a-look-back-at-what-the-critics-had-to-say","tag-judd-apatow","tag-movies","tag-steve-carell","tag-they-said-what","tag-what-critics-said-about-the-40-year-old-virgin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}