The 40 Year-Old Virgin

The title of this film may put you off.

Is it possible to pull of a film with its main subject being a forty year-old virgin? Surely in this day and age, no film goer is going to buy into such a conceit.

Happily, Mr Pinky’s usually faultless first instincts were wrong.

I found this to be a charming, sweet comedy that plays its gags with a light touch.

Some of the sequences had me holding my sides. There’s one particularly hilarious part in the film where the main character, Andy Stitzer (player by actor and co-screen writer Steve Carrell), is dragged along by his work buddies from the SmartTech electronics store to a bar.

The whole idea, according to these more experienced work buddies, is to go for a drunk woman and then ‘nail her’, to use the contemporary argot.

Andy picks up a girl. Due to the fact that Andy only rides a bicycle, the girl, who’s totally drunk, gives him a ride home. Of course it all ends up in a completely hair raising trip home for poor Andy.

Leading actor Steve Carrel is best know for his work in the US version of The Office and The Daily Show with John Steward. This is the first time I’ve seen him perform.

The nice thing about this actor is he comes across so well as a decent, basic average Joe. Carrell doesn’t over play his Andy, or go in for anything weird. The result is you have enormous sympathy for this forty-year old virgin.

The screenplay is sensibly structured too, avoiding the lame, lazy gags so popular with other types of film that are made in this genre.

Perhaps the biggest irony that the film points to is the fact that Andy is the most mature, while his over experienced workmates are emotional babies who can’t hold down relationships or relate in an adult manner to the opposite sex.

And did I mention the fabulous Jane Lynch (Best In Show) who plays the nutty, dominatrix-style boss?

The line where she asks Andy, ‘Have you ever heard of a F$#@ Buddy’ will have you choking on your cup of tea. Priceless stuff!

Another great scene has the Lynch character asking one of her employees if he has any marijuana. She says she wants to get ‘baked’ for two weeks.

I learn form Lynch’s Wikipedia entry that she is one of POWER UP’s ‘10 Amazing Gay Women in Showbiz.’ Mr Pinky is in total agreement.

(Mr Pinky will have to revisit Best In Show now that he comes to think of it. Another Pinky Post could be in the pipeline on this film soon.)

This film must have struck a chord with audiences as it took in around 170 million world wide. I can’t imagine that it cost that much to make.

Mr Pinky highly recommends The 40 Year-Old Virgin. This is a sweet, feel good movie that will put a spring in your step after having seen it.

It’s a testament to the producers' film making skills that they could take such an impossible theme and make it work so beautifully.