Judd Apatow blends honest, quirky relationship observations with sometimes hilarious, sometimes banal potty jokes in This is 40. In other words, it’s another Apatow flick. Paradoxically, the humor elements in this film seem to have a good time coexisting with the slice-of-life stresses of a marriage strained by child-rearing and financial woes. My veneration for his ability to pull off the most outrageous comedic bits while keeping a consistent dramatic flow is only occasionally offset here by scenes that fall too flat for comfort.
Apatow does little to avoid the assumption that This is 40 is perhaps largely autobiographical since he casts his real life wife, Leslie Mann, and their two daughters, Maude and Iris, as three of the lead characters. A well-to-do Los Angeles setting rounds out the dead ringer aspects. Paul Rudd is on hand to play Apatow’s alter ego, here a record label owner who, since he’s about to have to sell his house to stay above water, needs a financial break-out event and decides to bring back Brit late-70s rocker Graham Parker for a new record and a concert. (It would have been nice to have a little more performance scenes from Parker and his band the Rumour than the perfunctory couple of minutes provided here. After all, the film is well over two hours and is not exactly free of dead spots. Not even a couple of vintage Parker cuts on the soundtrack?)
Mann plays Rudd’s wife who owns a boutique that employs Megan Fox and Charlene Yi, one of whom is probably stealing from the business. Naturally, Rudd and his buds pine after Fox, who, incidentally, goes into a soliloquy about employing herself as an escort and how it’s not really prostitution. Rudd and Mann have a fight where they somehow compare themselves to Simon & Garfunkel, and Albert Brooks, Rudd’s father, plays a mooching dad to three in-vitro identical triplets. Brooks (back to comedy after his top-shelf dramatic performance in Drive) riffs jokes about not being able to tell the kids apart and manages to make faux-pax fun at Mann’s own biological Dad (John Lithgow), who’s largely estranged and cold. There are the requisite penis and vagina jokes and one that’s hard to see coming involving a tasteless body part of Rudd’s.
The chemistry between Rudd and Mann, and Apatow’s skill of getting beneath the skins of his characters saves the proceedings. A real sense of credibility lingers through Mann and Rudd’s arguments and posturing. Also admirable is their ability to manage a couple of wise-ass daughters and keep it loving despite tremendous pressure. There is also an amusing Philadelphia local angle. Current and former Philadelphia Flyers (James van Riemsdyk, Scott Hartnell, Matt Carle and Ian Laperriere) are on hand to provide cameos in a nightclub (didn’t Los Angeles just win a Stanley Cup?) where they’re hitting on Mann. The players, currently locked out of the NFL, ironically seem as financially unaffected by any financial woes as Mann and Rudd actually do here. On second thought, realism in a Judd Apatow comedy will only get you so far.
3.5 Keep an eye on Paul Rudd’s mirror (out of 5)