The 40-Year-Old Virgin by Judd Apatow and Steve Carell, directed by the former, starring the latter

The 40-Year-Old Virgin by Judd Apatow and Steve Carell, directed by the former, starring the latter

One could dismiss this comedy just by considering the title, with its preposterous, fanciful, absurd proposition, which if real, it would mean that the protagonist is a stupid man, not worth looking at in a cinema theater, never mind paying the ticket…

Luckily, there is the alternative where you just watch it on one of the myriad of channels that are dedicated to films, even in a country like mine, Romania, which is not exactly the main target of Hollywood fare.

Steve Carell is endearing, believable up to a point in the title role of the 40-Year-Old Virgin aka Andy, who works in  the same store with a series of amusing, cynical, friendly, helpful colleagues…

Scoop is a brilliant, marvelous, mirthful chef d’oeuvre by the glorious Evelyn Waugh – included on the Modern Library List of Best 100 Novels - http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/ - and the main character from it may remind one of Andy, or vice versa.

Besides, there is a repeated mantra that came to the mind of the under signed when watching the Virgin: “up to a point, Lord Copper”, which in the book is used to convey that the statement was not true.

In the age of Trump, we cannot dismiss the idea of virgins at forty, in a physical, sexual sense and perhaps much more importantly, in a spiritual, figurative way, given the “innocence” with which they take on the Fox fare and Russian designed “information”.

“Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit, touch it and the bloom is gone” Oscar Wilde

Andy works with David aka Paul Rudd, Cal aka Seth Rogen and they and the other colleagues and friends find out that this man is a virgin, so they need to change this state of affairs.

The results are amusing at times, rather awkward at others, depending on your sense of humor, the correlation it has or not with the absurd and the willingness to go along with the premise.

If an adult can vote with the “pussy grabbing orange clown” he or she might be a virgin…

Indeed, he or she probably is, definitely in the aforementioned, mental perspective aka one who has problem reading headlines, functional illiterates that give the free world a terrible leader.

Some chapters may work as a turn off for parts of the audience in the 40-Year-Old Virgin, such as the transformation of the hero from a hairy – no, excessively hairy – individual into a more acceptable man with patches of missing fur…

This might help male members of the audience remember how difficult it must be for the women who have to go through all that trouble to eliminate every single hair on their bodies…well except on the head…and hands…or is it illegal there too now?

Come to think of it, men are supposed to get rid of their wool, even if beards seemed to make a comeback, the rest has to be “clean” – there was a joke on the Bill Maher show, where there was a question:

What is pubic hair, for in California they no longer know about it…indeed, on other latitudes and longitudes as well…

Overall, apart from some laughs, this is not in the top 100 best comedies, together with Some Like It Hot, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Airplane, The King of Comedy, Dr. Strangelove or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, The Seven Year Itch or other masterpieces…

However, it all depends on your mood, taste and level of tolerance…more important perhaps, if you voted with the Kremlin supported, presumably blackmailed and owned Man…