The 40-Year-Old Virgin, 2005.
Directed by Judd Apatow.
Starring Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, Romany Malco, Elizabeth Banks, and Jane Lynch.
SYNOPSIS:
The 40-Year-Old Virgin makes its 4K Ultra HD debut for its 20th anniversary, providing a bit of a mental cleanser for those of us dismayed by current world events. Sure 2005 wasn’t great either, but it seems so quaint now, at least to me. Judd Apatow’s feature film debut looks great, of course, and you get a current-day retrospective on the film alongside a big batch of legacy bonus features. Pretty much a no-brainer purchase if you’re a fan of this film.
Ah, the early 2000s. Sure, 2005’s release of The 40-Year-Old Virgin happened just four years after 9/11, and we were in the throes of a Bush presidency determined to get into bloody, costly wars in the Middle East, but it was also a quaint period too, in a way. No social media, cell phones were really pretty much just for making calls, and setting up a business to sell other people’s stuff on eBay was a viable idea.
So it was through those perhaps muddied glasses that I took in this film 20 years after its theatrical debut. It’s the story of a guy named Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell) who works at a store clearly modeled after Best Buy (or maybe Circuit City; remember that one?) and somehow, at the ripe old age of 40, has never had sex.
When that fact comes to light during an illicit late-night poker game in the store, Andy’s co-workers, played by Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, and Romany Malco, decide to help him get laid. What follows is an amusing parade of incidents as he encounters women like Beth (Elizabeth Banks), who freaks him out with her freaky side, and his manager, Paula, played with scenery-chewing zeal by the always-delightful Jane Lynch.
He also runs across Trish Piedmont (Catherine Keener), who runs a business selling other people’s stuff on eBay and is interested in him. However, she comes with some baggage, namely in the form of two kids, and the pair of them end up trying to navigate the same kinds of ups and down we all do in romantic relationships. They also decide to wait a while before having sex for the first time, which, of course, amps up the tension in Andy’s quest to finally have someone deflower him.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin remains the kind of romantic comedy director Judd Apatow is known for: irreverent, goofy, and full of scenes that will make people squirm in their seats in different ways. Yes, there are some jokes that are inappropriate and dated with 20 years of hindsight, but it’s still a fun flick to revisit during these trying times.
This is the film’s debut on the 4K Ultra HD format, and Universal is celebrating that fact, as well as its 20th anniversary, with a new bonus feature that serves up Apatow, Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Jane Lynch, Kat Dennings, and Gerry Bednob for a fun discussion at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
Everything else has been ported over from the old days of jam-packed special editions, including the option to watch the theatrical or unrated version. You also get a code for a digital copy. Here’s the full list of extras:
• Commentary: Apatow, Carell (who co-wrote the film), and members of the cast get together for a group chat that definitely encounters the pitfalls of this kind of commentary, such as going off-topic and simply reacting to what’s on the screen, but this is also a great group of people to do that with. And you will learn a few things along the way.
• Deleted scenes: I’m pretty sure all of these are part of the unrated cut. You can listen to an optional commentary by Apatow too.
• You Know How I Know You’re Gay?: This scene in question was improvised, of course, along with a bunch of other moments in the film, and we get to see various iterations of the dialogue here.
• Date-a-Palooza: Whee, speed dating! It shows up in this film, of course, and it was another opportunity for plenty of material that didn’t make it into the film. And now you can see it.
• Line-O-Rama: More excised versions of jokes and other lines of dialogue.
• Raw Footage: And yet more stuff, this time from the poker, waxing, and bathtub scenes.
• Waxing Doc: The scene where Andy gets his chest waxed is probably the most memorable —and squirm-worthy — one in the film, so here’s a chance to see multiple angles of the footage.
• Judd’s Video Diaries: This is a fun little fly-on-the-wall look at Apatow working with the cast. Unsurprisingly, he’s not a difficult person to work with.
• Auditions: A nice little look at the cast when most of them were still pretty much unknowns. I forgot that Jonah Hill has a tiny part in this film.
• Rehearsals: What the title says.
• Reel Comedy Roundtable: A script read-through from pre-production.
• Cinemax Final Cut: The 40-Year-Old Virgin: I’m 55, so I can’t see the name Cinemax without turning it into “Skinimax” in my juvenile brain. This is a fun look into the scenes that made me think of that nickname all over again.
• My Dinner with Stormy: I had never heard of the porn star Stormy Daniels when I first saw this film, and I didn’t even realize she was in it until my recent rewatch. (I haven’t had this film on home video before.) So, yeah, this bonus feature is kind of wild, as Seth Rogan has dinner with Stormy and discusses the film. Neither of them knew what lay in wait for her a decade later.
• Gag Reel: Yeah, that’s obligatory for this film, right?
• 1970s Sex Ed Film: This is the kind of goofy extra that you don’t see much of anymore, I assume because home video budgets have been slashed to the bone. This is really just here so all of us Gen Xers — which applies to most of the cast and crew of The 40-Year-Old Virgin too — can laugh at how this subject was discussed way back when.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★★★★ / Movie: ★★★★
Brad Cook
