Movie Review: The 40-Year-Old Virgin

By Cynthia Fuchs

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What Parents Should Know
Parents should know that this movie is focused on a man's effort to lose his virginity. To that end, it leans heavily on verbal jokes and sight gags related to sex: crude slang for sexual activity, genitals, erections, bodily fluids, breasts, and dildos. By way of example: the first joke has to do with a woman having sex with a horse, though the language is much coarser and repetitive. The virgin and his three male coworkers/friends spend most of their time talking about sex, showing off or complaining about their conquests. They make homophobic remarks, go to bars and parties, ogle women (at one point, they see two girls kiss), play violent video games and watch violent ( Dawn of the Dead [1978]) and pornographic movies. Women wear revealing outfits (one shows a nipple during a speed-date conversation), drink, drive badly, and throw up. Characters drink repeatedly, smoke pot, and curse frequently; one smokes cigarettes when he's depressed and another spends long minutes trying to put on a condom. Soundtrack features songs about sex and sexual desire (for instance, Missy Elliot's "Get Ur Freak On").

Families can discuss virginity as a "choice." How does the movie make the case that, despite his friends' ribbing and his own embarrassment, the virgin represents a kind of romantic ideal, an earnest, awkward, sensitive man in search of a life partner? Why is it significant that all the different men at the store -- Jewish, black, Pakistani, Caucasian -- behave equally badly around women? How does the movie represent women as peripheral or comic objects in relation to the self-centered but also sympathetic male characters? How does Andy's dilemma serve as a metaphor for other, more often acknowledged forms of insecurity? How does Andy learn to appreciate his difference, even as he tries so hard to "fit in"?

Common Sense Media Review
A one-joke movie, THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN follows the tedious pattern of other recent boy-man movies: crude comedy leads to quaint romantic resolution. (This resolution has the cast performing numbers from Hair, layering sardonic and psychedelic onto quaint.)

Embarrassed that he's still a virgin at 40, nerdy Andy (Steve Carell) only confesses to his electronics store co-workers -- David (Paul Rudd), Jay ( Weeds' Romany Malco), and Cal (Seth Rogen) -- when they guess the (obvious) truth during a late-night card game. As all share boastful stories about their sexual experiences, he lets slip his unfamiliarity with female body parts and they make it their mission to help him "get laid." They're soon joined by other Smart Tech employees, including Mooj (Gerry Bednob) and Haziz (Shelley Malil), vehicles for ethnic stereotype jokes.

Andy then endures a series of encounters with variously inappropriate partners, their aggressiveness underlining his timidity: despondent drunk Nicky (Leslie Mann), sexual "freak" Beth (Elizabeth Banks), and pushy boss Paula (Jane Lynch) ("My door's always open, I'm very discreet"). When he does meet the "right" girl, the infinitely patient Trish (Catherine Keener), he's afraid to be honest with her, and so they spend much of the movie in romantic-montage scenes, riding bikes (he doesn't drive a car, in L.A.), laughing, and picnicking.

Andy also develops a tentative friendship with Trish's 16-year-old daughter Marla (Kat Dennings), also an embarrassed virgin. Though she finds his geekish affection for action figures and SF paraphernalia annoying, Marla comes to appreciate his kindness; her approval marks a turning point for Andy and for you, as before this point his behavior is as foolish and self-absorbed as that of his obnoxious, macho-posing comrades. Trish helps him sell his action figure collection on eBay, which leads him to financial solvency as well.

For all its raunchiness, however, the movie (like Wedding Crashers, like Adam Sandler's work) ultimately and predictably endorses very traditional values, even suggesting that boy-men embody such values in themselves (and really, bungling men just need to be nurtured by accommodating, self-sacrificing women). Andy's really a nice guy waiting to be found out. And poor Trish (and Marla) only have to figure out how to service him.

Families who enjoy this movie will probably like other comedies about childish men, including Anchorman, Old School, American Pie (high-school-aged men), Zoolander, and Breaking All the Rules (featuring a terrific performance by Jamie Foxx), or Carell's TV series, The Office. A decidedly more charming version of the boyman-to-man trajectory is available in 1938's Bringing Up Baby.