This is 40 has some absolutely hilarious moments that had me fighting back the laughter. Unfortunately, this is almost completely undone by it’s ridiculously long 134 minute run-time, with the film dragging on with pointlessly long scenes that poorly attempt to get some emotion out of you.
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Director of 2007 hit Knocked Up, Judd Apatow, returns with a film that is loosely a sequel to the great comedy. Some characters are back as the story focuses on Pete and Debbie (Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann) as they deal with life’s common problems of family, kids and money. They are also both celebrating (well, lamenting) their 40th birthdays.
The humour in this film is certainly hit and miss, with some great laughter, especially in the first half, coupled with jokes and set-ups that don’t quite hit, but don’t take away from the film. Some of the small roles work well as Jason Segel and daughter Sadie (Maude Apatow) provide moments of pleasure throughout. However, most of the characters are quite pointless and unlikable, primarily Albert Brooks, Chris O’Dowd, John Lithgow and Megan Fox who all bring little to the film. Melissa Mccarthy has her moments, but even her character’s humour becomes a bit too extreme towards the end.
The chemistry between Rudd and Mann is interesting, it works well early and it often feels like a real relationship which I think is a positive. It becomes very tiresome towards the end, perhaps because the whole movie does, and I can’t help but feel their relationship isn’t suited to the lead roles of a film but rather a smaller story like in Knocked Up.
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The main problem with the film is simply how long it is and how the emotional aspects are so poor. It really drags on and I’m glad I knew the run-time before it started as it felt like it was going to end numerous times throughout the last hour. I’m really not sure what the aim of the second half was, as when the film was making me laugh it was decent, it was just the other 80% of the film that disappointed.
I don’t get offended in movies, but there will be some moments many do in this film, with the boundaries truly pushed at times. It seems like a trend lately where the C word is brought out late in a film to try to surprise and I felt it was purely used as a shock tactic here, perhaps to wake people up from the slow drag that was the 2nd half.
This is 40 had it’s moments and I truly enjoyed some parts of it. Ultimately though, it was a painful experience with the film coming to a slow and painful halt in the end. C
I may catch it on DVD, but it’s very tiring what those modern comedies do – weed, vulgarity, swearing and then some “moving” scenes and usually pro-family agenda in the ending. This is how all of Apatow’s films work and they rarely turn out good. I really liked Rudd and Mann in Knocked Up but stretching their story to feature film seems like a bad idea.
Yeah, wait for the DVD if you even bother with it! It did have some moments but yeah, Rudd and Mann as lead’s didn’t work and it’s soooo long.
I have no interest in seeing this haha. Not surprised you didn’t like it that much. I do like Mann and Rudd though.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it but was optimistic, how disappointing! I like them too, they just didn’t seem to work well on the screen all the time.