The 40-Year-Old Virgin

[Ravi]

No, that's just the first try.

[cine]

saw this last night.. must say it was quite good. it IS a movie about a 40 year old virgin so don't expect brilliance.. but its a good, fun movie.. and carell is really funny (no shit). as for pubrick's prostitute question.. they do cover it.. sort of.

[modage]

saw a sneak preview of this tonite.  it was good but nowhere near wedding crashers good.  it was a little messy, and i understand not quite done.  the story seemed a bit all over the place and the crude humor sometimes played a bit at odds with the sweet story.  the problem sometimes with movies like this is trying to combine lots of grossout humor with heart, if you can't strike just the right balance you end up with something offputting.  steve carell was great and hilarious.  it was good to see him in a full role enabling him to be sympathetic and a full character instead of the sidekick.  so i really liked him, plus his apartment reminds me of my dads basement.  so it was funny.  the sidekick characters were all a bit much especially with the constant graphic sex talk.  but overall it was pretty good.  and very funny.  i had hoped for more from apatow though.  C+

[Kal]

I was afraid it would be like that... havent seen it yet but looking forward to it.

The way people laugh in the theatre with this trailer is amazing...

[Stefen]

So is this the flick that puts Seth Rogen on top? Last year Colin Farrell, This year Orlando Bloom, Next Year, muthafucking Seth Rogen.

[modage]

Less sex means more laughs for R-rated `Virgin': Fine line between funny, raunchy
By John Horn
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES --
Making a risque comedy turns out to be a lot harder than it looks. It's more than merely cooking up enough off-color jokes to fill a couple of hours. The real challenge is paring down all that R-rated raunch so that an involving, practically G-rated romance can emerge.

And so it was with "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," a comedy about hooking up -- or, more accurately, not hooking up. At a June research screening of the R-rated movie to which The Los Angeles Times was invited, the sex threatened to eclipse the comedy. The preview in Thousand Oaks had started with laughter so explosive much of the film's dialogue couldn't be heard. But then, as several hundred moviegoers watched one particular scene, the laughs began to evaporate.

For a moment, "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," which lands in theaters Friday, was uncomfortably dirty, and not all that funny.

Director and co-writer Judd Apatow assessed the lull from a back row, jotting down a few notes. By the next morning he was back in the editing room reworking the scene in which the film's undersexed lead, played by Steve Carell, settles down to watch, and perhaps enjoy, a pornographic movie.

By the time the next round of moviegoers was recruited for a research screening two weeks later, Apatow had toned down the porno footage, which he'd culled from an adult movie. With that, the scene -- now a shade less bawdy -- was no longer stopping the movie.

Balancing love, sex

Successfully calibrating the balance between love and sex, between story and shock, has made hits of movies such as "Wedding Crashers," "American Pie" and "There's Something About Mary." When they work as blockbusters, these movies invariably surround ribald jokes with sweet boy-gets-girl stories, and the amalgamation of raunch and relationship leaves audiences not only laughing but also rooting for the couple to succeed.

"The very first thing we talked about was tone," says Carell, the "Bruce Almighty" co-star who also co-wrote the "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" screenplay. "Did we want it to feel like a romantic comedy? Or a sex comedy? Or a combination of the two? Would it be broad? Or grounded?

"We decided it needed to be more grounded. If people are not involved with the story, I don't think any of the comedy is going to work. So it's a love story, masquerading as a sex comedy."

Over the course of seven research screenings, Apatow repeatedly fine-tuned his $26-million film, hopeful that the process that had caused him headaches on "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" would provide the feedback necessary to craft the most satisfying comedy possible.

The costs of research screenings -- about $10,000 per test -- are negligible given the stakes. The previews can lead a studio to take actions such as shooting a new ending (which happened as far back as 1939's "Wuthering Heights") or recutting a film for narrative clarity (as with this year's "Monster-In-Law"). Some filmmakers, including Woody Allen, disdain research screenings on principle.

But comedy directors generally love them, as they offer a second-by-second road map of which gags are working and which aren't. Apatow, who is making his feature directorial debut with "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," has everything to gain from the process. Although his movie isn't expensive, expectations are high, particularly since "Wedding Crashers" has been an R-rated comic smash.

Apatow has used "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" research screenings to test things as subtle as a five-second song cue. And he also recorded research audience reaction to the film on an audiotape. When he was back in the editing room, he synchronized the audience recording with the film. He thus was able to hear not only what failed to produce laughs, but also to notice laughs where he thought no joke existed.

After so much minor tweaking (Apatow didn't have to reshoot any scenes), "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" is now in the hands of the only audience that matters -- people who actually have to buy tickets.

From the very first shot of "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," when Carell's sleepy but aroused character Andy Stitzer shuffles into the bathroom after waking up, there is no question the movie resides at the outer limits of the R rating.

A dirty job

"My first thought when `Wedding Crashers' ended was, `Oh, my God. We are so much dirtier than they are,'" says Apatow, whose best-known writing credits come from the television series "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared."

The genesis for "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" was an improvisational comedy skit Carell used to perform, in which he played an adult virgin who tries to bluff his way through the telling of sexual tales. In the movie, Carell's Andy works in the backroom of a San Fernando Valley electronics store. An agreeable, content and preternaturally average adult, Andy on many levels remains stuck in adolescence.

He hoards shelves of collectible action figures as vague as "The Six Million Dollar Man's" Oscar Goldman -- all still in their original, pristine packaging. He owns a bicycle but no car, has wall posters of '80s rockers Asia and magician Doug Henning, and entertains himself by watching "Survivor" with his elderly neighbors. And for reasons both personal and situational, he has never had sex.

During a poker game with three of Andy's co-workers, that secret is revealed, and the colleagues (Paul Rudd, Romany Malco and Seth Rogen) scheme to take care of Andy's chaste status.

What follows includes a disastrous ride home with a drunk woman Andy meets in a bar, a not-fast-enough hotel rendezvous with a transvestite prostitute, a series of unsuccessful chats with unsuitable women at a speed-dating event, a colorful (but totally unwelcome) advance from Andy's electronics store boss, and an unsettling bathtub encounter with a randy bookseller.

To prepare Andy for a potential conquest, his three cohorts at one point take him to a salon, where an aesthetician rips rug-size patches of hair from Andy's chest (the waxing was real, and the blood on Andy's shirt is Carell's). But the more his friends try to set him up, the more exasperated Andy grows, until he falls for Trish (Catherine Keener), a single mom who considers Andy genuine and attractive.

When Apatow and Carell finished an early draft of the script early this year, Apatow showed it to longtime collaborators Garry Shandling (Apatow wrote and produced Shandling's "The Larry Sanders Show") and Adam McKay (Apatow produced "Anchorman," which McKay co-wrote and directed). Apatow subsequently showed a very rough cut to about 50 industry friends earlier this summer.

"What became clear very early is that people wanted the story," Apatow says. "They didn't want a joke fest. All the notes were: You can cut the jokes."

Apatow shot a number of sequences that never made the finished film -- many of them self-contained comic bits -- such as Andy's being arrested, that didn't advance the story (they'll of course turn up on the DVD). But audiences would still expect a lot of line-crossing hysterics, so the more delicate issue became delivering on that R-rated promise without going so far that people stopped caring about Andy and Trish.

`Worthy of an R'

"If you're going to be rated R, you want to deliver jokes that are worthy of an R," says Mary Parent, a Universal Pictures producer who as the studio's co-head of worldwide production supervised "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

Even with a beard, Carell was immediately recognized in the lobby by scores of fans leaving one late-June test screening in Sherman Oaks. People congratulated Carell not only on the movie they had just seen but also on his performances in "Bruce Almighty," "Anchorman" and television's "The Office" and "The Daily Show."

The kudos were nice, but Carell had another reason to be pleased: Thanks to the small tweaks, the movie was playing better than ever, even in a stadium-seating multiplex, which Apatow is convinced hurts comedies because he believes laughter doesn't easily reverberate and spread in a steeply pitched auditorium.

The offending, hip-thrusting porn footage had been excised for some milder action from the same film, and where the audience had been silent, it was now laughing. Oddly enough, in a comedy predicated on someone having sex, moviegoers didn't want to see porn clips of the same thing, even when they were played in the film on fast forward.

"It was tough to find the right tone," Carell says of the porn-movie scene. "The first time, it was way too graphic. It pulled people out of the movie."

Audiences also were uncomfortable with a quick scene in which Andy overhears his elderly neighbors having sex, with the husband yelling, "Don't be lazy, girl!"

Another dilemma: At one stage in the film's evolution, Andy himself proved a distraction. Universal executives had told Apatow that they were afraid Andy might come across at best as a creepy loner and at worst a serial killer.

"There is a fine line," Parent says. "Men and women alike could look at him and if he's too much of a sad sack, they will think, `Dude, get a life.'"

The top Universal executives, who attended the early-June Thousand Oaks screening in force, were pleased that Andy had turned out far more winsome (Apatow added several lines that addressed the serial killer issue head-on). But the executives still had a number of other concerns after that test.

Andy's encounter with the transvestite prostitute was too long, they felt, as was the speed-dating scene. Apatow pared both sequences, and Universal was happy enough with the fixes that it didn't even send a senior executive to the Sherman Oaks preview.

That later preview also proved two other earlier stumbling blocks had been resolved.

Early in the film, Andy meets Beth (Elizabeth Banks), who works at a bookstore. Later she returns in a lustful mood. But before Andy and Beth can do anything, Beth decides to warm up by herself in a bathtub.

"We wanted to show how over his head he is," Apatow says. "We were always terrified of that scene. The audience is so uncomfortable."

Too uncomfortable, in fact.

So just as the filmmakers dialed down the porn-film scene, they had to rework the bathtub sequence. The fix came not so much by trimming Beth's antics, although a few frames were cut, but by inserting a new line of dialogue for Andy. Nonplused by what he's witnessing in the tub, Andy now remarks, "Wow. This is graphic."

Explains Carell: "It was having a character say what the audience might be thinking. For me to actually express it undercuts how graphic it really is." By adding the quick line of dialogue, which was not part of the Thousand Oaks test but was included in the Sherman Oaks preview, complaints about the scene disappeared.

Another scene causing worry was a fight between Andy and Trish, who couldn't understand why he didn't want to sleep with her (his virginity was unknown to her). The wounded Trish finally makes fun of Andy's riding a bike. Einstein rode a bike, Andy says defensively. Einstein had a wife too, Trish responds angrily, and to paraphrase the rest of her dialogue, Einstein also had sex with her.

Some young men thought Trish was too shrewish, Carell says, and he and Apatow worried the Einstein line would turn women against her too. So the line about Einstein's wife was taken out. And then it was put back in.

"We thought it would make her less endearing, but it did exactly the opposite," Carell says of the test screening reaction. "The women in the audience loved [the line], and I would have thought the reverse."

For Apatow and Carell, the research screenings have been an eye-opening process, giving them tools they had never fully used.

Having worked mostly in television, Apatow had neither the time nor the inclination to test much of his earlier work, and even if he did, he wasn't always interested in the results. The characters in "Freaks and Geeks," research screenings suggested, would be more likable if they weren't such losers -- which would have negated the whole point of the show.

Research screenings for Will Ferrell's "Anchorman" were divisive and not always clarifying. "The audiences were split, because of Will's particular brand of humor," Apatow says.

"For the people who liked it, it was their favorite movie. And the people who didn't like it were annoyed. I always start testing terrified it will be in total disagreement with my gut instincts. I started out being scared that the audience would say, `I hate this nerd.' And then I wouldn't know what to do."

But audiences seemed to like Andy from the beginning. "I'm so happy we didn't have to sell out" and reshoot the movie, Apatow says. "They didn't tell me anything I disagreed with."

There even were tests for a song cue that leads into Andy's porn film scene, with Lionel Richie's "Hello" proving funnier to moviegoers than Lou Rawls' "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine."

Apatow kept in one joke spoken by his wife, Leslie Mann, that never got great laughs (after drunkenly vomiting all over Andy, she takes solace that she at least won't have to exercise the next morning). "There were jokes in there I thought were funny that I left in for myself," he says.

Carell says that at a certain point he just had to choose what felt right.

"If you changed just one line," Carell says, "one [test] number would go up and another number might go down. You can't ever satisfy every want or need. It's all so new to me, and I don't know how much stock to put in it."

perhaps the movie has been improved from the version i saw?

[Finn]

Two Big Thumbs Up from Ebert & Roeper....wooow

[grand theft sparrow]

Funnier than Wedding Crashers. Just as overlong but the lulls are more evenly distributed so it's okay.

Seth Rogen is god.

[Ravi]

saw a sneak preview of this tonite.  it was good but nowhere near wedding crashers good.  it was a little messy, and i understand not quite done.  the story seemed a bit all over the place and the crude humor sometimes played a bit at odds with the sweet story.  the problem sometimes with movies like this is trying to combine lots of grossout humor with heart, if you can't strike just the right balance you end up with something offputting.  steve carell was great and hilarious.  it was good to see him in a full role enabling him to be sympathetic and a full character instead of the sidekick.  so i really liked him, plus his apartment reminds me of my dads basement.  so it was funny.  the sidekick characters were all a bit much especially with the constant graphic sex talk.  but overall it was pretty good.  and very funny.  i had hoped for more from apatow though.  C+

I wasn't troubled by the grossout humor.  I haven't laughed this hard at a movie in a long time, and I thought the balance between sexual humor and sweetness was acceptable.  Carell is a unique talent, and even better here than in his rather limited Anchorman role.  Catherine Keener's earnestness doesn't match the film but fits in (if that makes any sense).

Did anyone notice that this was a giant ad for Universal films?  Dawn of the Dead, Bourne Identity (or Supremacy, I forget), the Universal horror figures in Andy's apartment.

It was a tad too long, but the lulls aren't exactly boring.

[Gamblour.]

This movie was so fucking hilarious. I've never been so attracted to Catherine Keener...as has been said, she's very frank and aggressive, which is always hot. Jane Lynch is fucking hilarious, as always, and she's especially creepy in this movie. Who was Leslie Mann in this movie, I didn't recognize her at all.

Seth Rogen is indeed the funniest minor character. It's weird when my age starts creeping up on these talented people, i start feeling like i'm missing out on opportunities or something.

[matt35mm]

Who was Leslie Mann in this movie, I didn't recognize her at all.

I haven't seen the movie but she has a big part in the trailer where she's driving in her PT Cruiser and demands that he tell her if he thinks she's pretty or not and then I guess crashes the car.  She's pretty recognizable there.

[Gamblour.]

Ooohh ok. Wow, she doesn't look the same to me. Fuck she was awesome in this. Everyone was. Go see this movie! It's been a while since I left a movie and said that I wanted to see it again immediately.

[Slick Shoes]

yeah this movie was awesome. i will be seeing it again.

[Kal]

yep... and its two hours also but goes fast... very funny and they kept the story from falling apart very well... steve carell is now a big star thanks to this

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

This movie was crap.

SPOILERS... possibly



The jokes were below even juvenile humor.  The actual theme was beaten to death.  We understand it's ok to be a virgin and wait for "the right one"... thanks for telling us every other line.

This movie could've ended at least 6 times... at least.  Steve Carrel is funny, which works oddly because his lines were crap but the delivery was great.

The ending number could've been funny if the movie hadn't dragged on for so long.  Turning into a song became more of a relief that it was over, than a funny good bye.

I liked the premise, but the movie needed a focus.  Was it a comedy? A drama? A dramady?

If it was a comedy, the jokes barely scratched the surface of any humor other than an overall "This man has never been laid."  

If it was a drama, the situations were hardly believable enough to let you get into them and feel what anyone was feeling.

I like to give movies fair chances, but I found myself asking the person next to me what time it was more often than laughing.