You have to figure the title was all the pitch that was required.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
Green light, signalled the studio, which probably told the Virgin filmmakers to proceed and deliver a raunchy sex comedy that would get the attention of the teen demo in the incredibly competitive summer season. The studio had visions of a success like There's Something About Mary, a project which would earn enthusiastic reviews and valuable word of mouth based on water-cooler moments - like the Mary hair-gel scene.
Again, the Virgin dudes delivered - the waxing scene was everywhere, along with several other lines and scenes, gleefully retold among that prized demo, which cannot be repeated in this newspaper.
They had the studio at the title and turned The 40-Year-Old Virgin into a much buzzed-about summer comedy with earnings north of $100 million US.
Funny thing about a very funny movie - maybe the intent was just big laughs from hardcore comedy - but The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a better film than you might think. It's not exactly a Billy Wilder comedy, but it's surprisingly nice and sweet, with funny and incisive things to say about male friendship, and even relationships. Don't panic - there is no shortage of raunchy material, delivered with gusto by a skilled cast - just look a bit closer and you may agree the filmmaker aimed a bit higher than, say, American Pie.
The first sign that this project was a bit more elevated was the casting of Steve Carell in the title role. Carell, who co-wrote the Virgin script with director Judd Apatow and is now slated to play Maxwell Smart in the Get Smart remake, has big comedy cred, from stealing scenes in movies like Ron Burgundy and Bruce Almighty to his current stint on the under-appreciated The Office and his days on The Daily Show.
Apatow has major cred, too, from his short-lived but lamented TV works Undeclared and Freaks and Geeks. Carell and Apatow understand misfit types like The 40-Year-Old Virgin's Andy Stitzer, but, more importantly, they have empathy for them.
Empathy is the key point - Apatow and Carell decided not to make Andy a loser. He's a geek, it's true, with an overdeveloped fondness for video games and comic books and an apartment full of unopened collectibles (as any geek with a collection knows, the items must stay in the original packaging to preserve their pristine condition), but the intent is not to mock or belittle Andy and his own pristine state.
The script offers Carell the opportunity to flesh out the caricature suggested by the title and our first impression of Andy, and make him a human being.
The film is the better for that approach. At every stage of Andy's journey from alone guy to guy with friends trying to remedy the alone business to hooked-up guy, we are rooting for Andy, not running him down.
Give credit to the script and the talented Carell, who never overplays the obvious comedy and derives most of his laughs from reacting to his new friends, who are brimming with advice and life experience to share with their exotic virgin friend.
Many of the funniest moments involve the interaction of Andy and his co-workers at the Smart-Tech electronics store, from the waxing scene - "That whole Teen Wolf thing you got goin' has to go," one of the buddies tells the impressively hirsute Andy - to the hilarious Date-A-Palooza nightmare.
We also get a good vantage point for a primer about how guys talk and lie to each other about women and everything else. (The "You know how I know you're gay scene'' is flat-out hilarious, in a guy-humour kind of way.)
The sparkling Catherine Keener plays the single mom who dates Andy and who waits for Andy while he gets ready.
The waiting goes on too long, and the movie could have been tightened up a bit. The DVD release features an unrated version with 17 more minutes and an emphasis on the raunchy stuff. That is an obvious marketing ploy to entice that young demo we were talking about, but with the exception of the porn star scene (on the subject of enticements) the theatrical version was better. (There are lots of laughs in the special features too, including extended or alternate takes of very funny scenes. Well worth watching.)
Of the summer's two big comedies, The 40-Year-Old Virgin is vastly superior to the inexplicably successful Wedding Crashers, a one-joke movie padded to bloated excess.
And you can expect this Virgin to last a lot longer.
THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN - original rating: 4 SUNS (out of 5); DVD rating: 3.5 SUNS
