Clueless Movie Reviews: “This Is 40”

There’s lots to like in Judd Apatow’s latest directorial outing, This is 40, which features characters he introduced audiences to in 2007’s Knocked Up. The film manages to always feel very personal to Apatow himself while for the most part being accessible and enjoyable to anyone even close to 40 years old. It’s overly long, and it lacks any kind of real narrative, but the charm of the cast and the laughs make you more than willing to follow this family around for over two hours as they try to figure out how to love and not kill each other.

Five years after the events of Knocked Up, Pete and Debbie (Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann) are both facing their 40th birthdays and dealing with it in very different ways. Debbie sticks adamantly to her lie that she’s only 38 to anyone who brings it up, while Pete more or less avoids dealing with it because he’s far more preoccupied with his so far unprofitable independent record label and the family’s precarious money situation.

In the three weeks leading up to Pete’s big 40th birthday party (specifically NOT Debbie’s), the couple deals with a variety of other crises, things like one of Debbie’s store employees (Megan Fox) possibly stealing from the store, Pete’s mooch of a dad (Albert Brooks) continuing to guilt Pete into lending him money he can’t afford to spare, and their elder daughter Sadie’s (Maude Apatow) addictions to Facebook chatting and Lost, all while trying to find some time for themselves and figure out why all of a sudden it’s so hard to talk about anything without it turning into an argument. They fight over money, over sex, over Debbie’s secret smoking habit and Pete’s need to eat cupcakes when he thinks no one’s looking, over Pete’s ‘anything but pop’ taste in music that the women in the house don’t get because it doesn’t make anyone happy, and lots and lots of other mundane, everyday stuff that audiences should find sound very familiar.

Now, why would you want to watch this family whine and argue and bitch to each other and their friends about all this stuff when you could probably just stay home and live it out yourself? Because when Rudd, Mann, and company do it it’s much wittier and funnier than most of us could ever be, and there’s comfort to be found in how silly all of the stuff people stress over in these situations can really look and sound when put on film.

There’s no question ever in these proceedings that the situations and questions faced by the characters in This is 40 are personal to Apatow. It simply feels too genuine and “lived through” for it not to be the case. Pete, then, is Apatow himself, and it’s not much of a stretch to assume that the mistakes Pete makes — the moments of poorly-chosen words, misunderstanding, and downright stupidity — are inspired by the director’s own less-than-stellar moments as a husband, a father, and the sole possessor of a Y-chromosome in his house. The script spares no one, though; Debbie, too, makes mistakes, and the kids (more so Sadie; Charlotte, played by Iris Apatow, is just a sweetheart who doesn’t like it when anyone fights) and their needs just make things even trickier. And yet everyone’s still likeable – there are no villains here, no easily-pigeonholed people. They’re just people trying to do right by the people they love and perform damage control whenever necessary.

In the midst of it all, you might find yourself thinking that things feel like they’re going nowhere, that it’s all dragging on too long, or that no one’s really acting here, and those would all be fair observations. In the end, though, none of those diminish just how funny it all is or how real it all feels. If you want to feel better about the things that stress you out about your spouse, your kids, your parents, or all of the above and how you deal with them, for better or worse, do yourself a favor and see this movie. You may cringe at how familiar what you see on screen might seem, but you’ll still laugh, all the same.

Score: 3.5 out of 5

This is 40
Starring Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, John Lithgow, Megan Fox, and Albert Brooks. Written and directed by Judd Apatow.
Running Time: 134 minutes
Rated R for sexual content, crude humor, pervasive language and some drug material.