Saturday, September 10
The Best Comedy of 2005
My wife and I have seen The 40 Year-Old Virgin twice so far. My wife bought the soundtrack, I put the wonderfully creepy poster on my desktop, and I've already gone to Amazon to sign up to receive notice when I can preorder my DVD copy of the film. It's the funniest film of 2005--and one of the best times I've ever had at the movies.
I've been a HUGE fan of The Daily Show for years and years (along with just about everyone else my age and disposition), and I thought Steve Carrell was the highlight of Anchorman (along with Paul Rudd's "Sex Panther"). So I was really excited about his first starring role. But I got even MORE excited when I learned that it was directed by Judd Apatow, the mind behind such amazingly good things as Freaks and Geeks, the woefully underrated Undeclared, and The Larry Sanders Show. Add to this the fact that the cast includes not only Paul Rudd, Catherine Keener, and Jane Lynch, but also Seth Rogen, perhaps the funniest guy in the group (example: "She's a grandma? Man. I wish my grandma looked like that. My grandma looks like Jack Palance. If Jack Palance looked like her I'd wanna fuck Jack Palance." Another example: "You've gotta wait till the seed grows into a plant. Then you've gotta fuck the plant").
But the great cast is just part of it. The script is first-rate--funny as hell yet with a warmth that is rare in a dick-joke film. Plus, wonder of wonders, there's a plot that has a beginning, middle, and end, each part logically following the next. How often does that happen in a comedy? Still, in my mind, a comedy is only as good as its jokes--and it's the jokes, the insanely funny jokes, that make this picture work. So I'll stop gushing and just say this film is incredibly worth seeing, so go now--NOW--and see it, and then go home and wait by your computer until it's available to preorder on Amazon.
NOW! GO!
