James
I came to Judd Apatow's "This is 40" not realising that it was actually a follow-up film (to "Knocked up" of 2007), but I'm none the worse for that. But what one does have here is yet another cynical, dirty ADULT (!!!) American comedy ultimately slightly dented by sentimentality, notwithstanding its making every effort to be hard, ruthless, unsentimental, sexually unabashed, lavatorial and generally vulgar. Intriguing in a way how that happens, and all the more so because the film has the first of several extra strands - in fact an extra depth - some quite serious thoughts that do actually hit home and ring true ... about middle age in an individual, in a marriage, and in a family; estrangement from parents; the generation gap with kids past and present; career failure; financial constraints (the key real-life story for all-but-the-richest Americans for decades now - and the one that got Trump elected); health issues; the very fact of no longer being young; and so on. We don't actually know which aspect is going to win through, and have the strong impression that the makers of "This is 40" don't know either, as they toy with the analysis and the screwball bit, and push the misery and descent into total chaos with no evidence that we're likely to pull out of that into "happy ending" territory; and yet we do! It's not really a promising basis for film brilliance, but even a bit of examination makes it clear that far more thought than you would expect has gone into this film, which does have its moments, and its successes, and we do laugh from time to time, even in spite of ourselves - which is why we're here, I guess! The core cast here is obviously the 40-year old married couple Pete and Debbie, as played by Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann. For the piece to work, these two have to be funny, frustrated and sexy. Now, I'm not sure how good-looking Rudd is, but have no doubts about Mann (Apatow's wife, BTW), who makes attractive use of her womanly wiles at several points in the film. Anyway, the pair spend a great deal of time getting tired and fed up with each other, and it's not always funny. In fact it's sometimes pretty sad. They have on-off sexual interest, which is limited by the presence at home of their kids, and both go so far as to dream about what life might be like if their spouse were absent, or even dead. That's quite strong stuff...But the "peak achievement" of the film comes when the pair face up to a common "enemy", in the shape of a schoolkid called Joseph (Ryan Lee) - who the couple realise has been writing (somewhat) bad things online about the elder of their two daughters; and then his mother (that's the now-very-well-known Melisssa McCarthy, who is left entirely free to do her thing). Anyway, each parent separately attacks the kid verbally when they encounter him at school, quickly "losing" it and resorting to an over-the-top crescendo of bad language and efforts to humiliate - which work. This is a bit disturbing, wrong, outrageous, subversive, unusual in a film ... but also moderately shock-funny, and this is why we here, I believe! To see those boundaries of comedic taste pushed a bit! Dad Pete also takes on Joseph's mother, in a way that ends very badly for him, but then Joseph, Joseph's mum and the couple come before the School Principal, whose arbitration efforts fail miserably, but also allow the definitely in-the-wrong Pete and Debbie - here for the first time "of one mind" - to look completely angelic and goody-two-shoes, while the rope is supplied for Joseph's mum to "hang herself", which she does, in a total diatribe. Given (each party's) awareness that Joseph's (apparently single) mum is less good-looking and less middle-class than Pete and Debbie, and given that she soon goes off the rails completely with her crude anger, this is a kind of cruel (if somewhere even slightly erotic) comedy spectacle, a la Bonny and Clyde perhaps; but it is designed to show - immorally but effectively - that at times at least Pete and Debbie as a couple "have still got it", in every sense ... as indeed they have.Surprisingly, the film has a couple of other tricks up its sleeve. Pete's dad is played by Albert Brooks (remember him?) - and this is a love him/hate him character REALLY WELL DONE, with a great many comedy nuances (all the more so as the guy is Jewish, but in fact broke Jewish). He stands in sharp (financial and class and ethnic and religious and personality) contrast with Debbie's cold-but-wanting-at-last-to-be-warmer surgeon dad, whom she hardly knows at all (of all things) - and here the actor is the well-known John Lithgow. Now it's extremely "strategic" that Apatow has placed two great male actors in these positions, and in fact it's a bit of inspired planning of near-Shakespearean quality - all the more so as (thanks to 21st-century technology), both dads have remarried and have kids the ages of Pete and Debbie's kids! (The latter are Maude and Iris Apatow by the way, and they are as funny and rude and moody as they can afford to be, without raising really questionable taste issues).The generation gaps are all mixed up here and that's wittily ironic.But the acting ensemble "on Pete's team" and "on Debbie's team" goes beyond family - and of course rightly so. Megan Fox is in there - hot as ever - playing "Desi" (well what else could she be called, really?) and she works as an employee in Debbie's clothing shop (giving the perfect pretext for her to disrobe); and her presence also allows Debbie to go off partying and (partly) forgetting family, all the more so as she learns that Desi is an escort part-time, who doesn't have to have sex with her clients ... but always does! Here our lustier expectations are being met perfectly, and even more so when the pairing of attractive older and younger women meet up and dance with a hockey team, one of whom (done with some class by Wyatt Russell) is more than ready to hook up with Debbie, age-gap notwithstanding. Debbie also has a fitness coach Jason played by Jason Segel (another minorish part well-played; and all the more so when he teams up with a supporting character for Pete in the finale - see below). So yes, Pete's work activities (he's a private, small-time music promoter) brings him into contact with his employees, notably Irishman Ronnie (Chris O'Dowd), as well as his clients - (influential) real-life Brit musician Graham Parker playing himself - and also given a few key lines in a story that somewhat reflects Parker's actual career in music!!! At the 40th birthday party that marks the climax of the film, Ronnie (from Pete's team) vies with Jason (from Debbie's team) for the attentions of Desi (from Debbie's team), the dad's meet each other and the family, Parker plays the music, and everybody interacts with everybody else, before Pete escapes in self-destructive desparation. Since there are quite a few other bit-parts that again give their actors quite a large number of significant lines, and since these (more team-neutral) parts are authority figures in education, health, finance and so on, the careful construction of this 2-hour-plus movie is made clear, and the term "Shakespearean" again comes to mind - unbidden and yet there it is!For the reasons of reined-in bad taste mentioned at the beginning, the film does not fully succeed (indeed perhaps a US film made for that audience can NEVER succeed), but it's pretty tasteless, funny, crude-but-pithy on the way, and certainly punches above its weight with very well-cast versions of what would on paper be minor parts, but are not. I wanted to dismiss this entirely, but watched through to the end and was more impressed than I expected to be.
