A no nonsense comical
‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’, for the lack of better word was, proper. Even though it’s a great material for comedy, it wasn’t to my complete satisfaction, may be because I watched it tad too late or may be the title was in my mind for quite some time and I imagined all sorts of scenarios that would pop up in the movie. Nevertheless, it was a decent time pass movie or in my words a ‘K TV’ movie which one needn’t put an effort to watch but works reasonably well when watched on the fly.
It’s easy to caricaturise a 40-year-old virgin and they do so in the first few minutes. It would have been better if it had been dealt in any other way apart from him being methodological and organized. Because that need not be the characteristic of a typical “virgin”. But its not a film to complain about this as it serves the purpose. We quickly get introduced to Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell) and how he generally is. His friends make a mockery of him after knowing that he’s a virgin, not that they didn’t before knowing about it. But conveniently for them, they get to know about his virginity only the night after movie starts, even though they had worked together for years.
The love-hate relationship between the friends were tremendous. I thought in the end there would be one cheesy dialogue like that of ‘Hangover’ but no they kept the track pure. Most of the laugh out loud jokes worked and happy that they were harsh and unapologetic. I’m sure the dialogue, “do you know how I know that you’re gay” would have got a separate fan following in local culture around the time the movie released. Actually, these are the things one misses in a comedy which is not in their language. It was funny, no complaints about it. But English natives would’ve been able to enjoy the joke as if its something among their peers, instead of watching from an outsider’s view. May be a movie like ‘Saroja’ wouldn’t appeal to others but would work for local audience, because the movie understands the pulse of locals better.
The four friends are typical template characters. A loudmouth black man, a “self-deprecating” loser and a “passionate” man. They’re easyly definable characters. That’s what comic movies of the old do. They don’t invest on deep characters, something like ‘Sideways’ but its more subtle. ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ is not, because the genre is different. That’s why it works too, so no complaints there. My favourite of the four would definitely be the “lovelorn, self-destructive” loser David (Paul Rudd). It was lovely to see him and reminded me a little bit of myself too. Mostly all of scenes worked. But the “gay” scene and the scene where he gives porn to Andy stood out. It was lovely.
As expected, there should be a love track with “matured” women, which was typical but again worked. More than the writing, Catherine Keener as Trish Piedmont, did an excellent job. The short emotional scenes in the comedies are the ones which really make the film work and here too it was the same. I loved the love angle between the two. Especially the twenty-date streak before sex, it was lovely. Of course, there was drama towards the end but we all see it coming right. It would have worked better for locals and theatre audience but to watch a movie from the past on a seemingly innocuous point of view, I had already formed an opinion about the movie by that time.
Anyways it was pleasant feeling to watch a Hollywood movie after years, which I don’t know how it just flew buy. Though not a spellbinding (I didn’t want that) it still was a film to watch on a jolly good evening having tea and biscuits. Even though I enjoyed it, I felt the movie could have been still better and it was stuck somewhere between reckless laugh out loud comedy (which I’d have preferred) and subtle humour. These things happen when you catch up on a movie without knowing what to expect. Most of the time, it’s good because it surprises you in a different way but at times doesn’t satisfy you as much as you’d have expected it to be.
constantscribbles 