Based upon characters created by Judd Apatow
Written and Directed by Judd Apatow
**** (four stars)
With "This Is 40," Writer/Director Judd Apatow has completely nailed the turbulent and ever shifting physical and psychological landscape of middle age. It is a hugely funny film featuring the pitch perfect performances of Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann as the married Pete and Debbie, first introduced to audiences in Apatow's "Knocked Up" (2007). While "This Is 40" is expectantly entertaining and filled with a ribald outlook and stinging one-liners, it is also a precise and provocative film whose full emotional power sneaks up on you, hitting you with wallops of hard learned and hard earned truths before you have even realized it...much like the experience of living through middle age.
As a prelude to this review, I have to say that the experience of reaching the age of 40, and even a few years further than that, has admittedly not been the easiest time for me. After the wonders of childhood, the angst of adolescence, and the emotional waywardness and restlessness of my 20's, I really began to feel comfortable within my own skin for the first time once I reached the age of 30. Between the ages of 30-34, everything felt to be...just right. Certainly there were areas in which I knew I desired to improve but overall, my head, spirit and body all seemed to be working together in full tandem. And then, I turned 35. Then, 36, 37 and so on until I reached 40 and began to then peer hesitantly over my shoulder, wondering just how 40 years evaporated so seemingly quickly. And of course, that thought led to the inevitable connective question: If 40 years are gone, then how many more will I have left? Do I get 40 more? Or 30? Or 50? Or even...gulp...20?
Thoughts of mortality began to overtake my spirit in a most prevalent manner, much more than I am even remotely comfortable with. And those thoughts have opened a previously locked cabinet of longings and regrets where anxious and excited anticipation of the future once resided. My road of life, which seemed so long and winding, now looked considerably shorter as I could look back upon so many events and choices, all of which brought me to my current status as husband, preschool teacher, cat parent, adult son and adult grandson, yet I am still so unsure at what else there is to look forward to as so many life goals have already been reached. Each new bodily ache and pain makes me pause where I would have once dismissed it. Desiring a greater longevity, I am more conscious of what I place into my body while I also have extreme difficulty curbing the tastes that I have consumed for so long.
And what of my relationship with my wife, a woman I have been connected with ever since we were each 21 years old? How has our relationship grown, changed, stagnated, blossomed, nearly erupted and then healed itself over and again and how do we keep evolving individually as well as together with a well worn history of passions and resentments contained firmly within? Just this afternoon, almost immediately after seeing this film, I found myself in an alternately funny and intense phone conversation with my wife about an item she wanted me to purchase at a nearby grocery store. It was something I had sought the previous day to no avail (and with assistance from a nice store clerk) but she was just insistent that I was not looking in the right place. The conversation took an odd turn when it was discovered that she never had the correct name of the item she wished for in the first place and that the item was located at a completely different grocery store to boot, a discovery that led to a series of awkward pauses, frigid silences, assurances and increasingly frustrated re-assurances that neither of us was upset with the other when it was more than obvious that we both were. Old resentments began to peek through but remained at bay and by the time we had each hung up on each other, I rubbed my forehead, attempting to dull an on-coming headache (it's not a tumor is it?) and muttered to myself tiredly, "God, we are Pete and Debbie!"
Judd Apatow's "This Is 40" is sharply and miraculously in tune with all of those emotions and experiences plus so many, many more as he invites us to spend a week in the lives of Pete and Debbie, whose often volatile marriage continues to ebb more than flow as they each experience their 40th birthdays (or in Debbie's case, the eternal age of 38). As "This Is 40" opens, we find Pete and Debbie enthralled in a lively session of lovemaking in the shower, an amorous act that spins on a dime into anger, confusion, and hurt feelings as an incredulous Debbie cannot believe that Pete would take Viagra before having sex with her. Is she not enough for him? Does he not find her attractive enough anymore where he can become aroused without assistance? This emotional minefield continues as Pete and Debbie struggle with raising their two daughters, the emotionally explosive 13-year-old Sadie (Maude Apatow) who holes herself away in an i-pod/i-pad/i-touch world while also obsessively viewing "Lost," and the sweetly charming but sadly ignored 8-year-old Charlotte (Iris Apatow). Additionally, Pete and Debbie also struggle to forge and maintain significant relationships with their own difficult parents. For Debbie, it is with Oliver (John Lithgow), her wealthy and long estranged surgeon Father. For Pete, it is with his Father, Larry (a wonderful Albert Brooks) the mopey moocher to whom Pete has secretly supported for years and to his own family's financial detriment .
In addition to their battles on the home front, Debbie owns a small clothing boutique yet fears that either one of her two employees (played by Megan Fox and Charlyne Yi) are embezzling funds from her. Life at work is even more stressful for Pete, whom after leaving a position with Sony, has founded his own independent record label, complete with endlessly bickering employees (Lena Dunham and Chris O'Dowd), and specializes with housing new material from "retro" artists, of which Graham Parker and the Rumor (who appear throughout as themselves) are Pete's current passion project. Unfortunately, his career moves are far from lucrative, forcing Pete to face the difficult realization that he may possibly have to sell his family's home.
From here, "This Is 40" provides us with a sprawling, minutely observed, episodic journey through Pete and Debbie's lives and marriage as they each confront mounting adult responsibilities, their fading youth and oncoming mortality and the seemingly constant uphill battle to remain the people they always saw themselves to be regardless of the ticking clock of time.
Through television and film, the very best of Judd Apatow's work has arrived when he chronicles the collective growth and development (or lack thereof) of his characters in life, love and relationships. With "This Is 40," Pete and Debbie especially are kicking and screaming into middle age which provides Apatow with a mountain of material in which he mines great comedy and an amount of unexpected pathos that nearly blindsided me as the film overall is so congenial. As you all know this film is being advertised as a "sort of sequel" to "Knocked Up," and I would not be at all surprised if there are some of you who may be wondering if the characters of Ben and Alison (portrayed by Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl) would make an appearance. Well...without any sense of spoiling, they do not return. but, that is more than OK as Apatow has fashioned both films to work together as Ben and Alison's relationship could have also worked as an approximation of Pete and Debbie's earliest years together. In turn, "This Is 40" could also exist as an approximation of Ben and Alison's future.
While Apatow clearly has great affection for his characters, he is also, and very wisely, highly critical of Pete and Debbie as he presents the baby steps of their shared journey from being self-centered and at times very selfish people to ones that are more selfless. For Apatow, the road to maturity and growing up is hard traveled and hard fought, especially as Pete and Debbie have such difficulty raising their children while also finding the delicate balance being adult children to their own parents, people who have absolutely no intention of being parents. With this collection of relationships, Apatow very cleverly shows how Pete and Debbie's severe limitations as parents came to be and how the troubles they share with Oliver and Larry completely inform their dangerously immature work with Sadie and Charlotte, no matter how much they love them. With just this theme of parents and children, Judd Apatow has already packed "This Is 40" with a truthfulness that may hit too close to home for those of you who just desire to go to the movies and laugh the night away. And as I have stated many times before, this very trait of Apatow's finest work is what I love the very most about his approach. how he realizes that just being funny, while being a great thing, is also just not enough to when it comes to making material resonate and even approach becoming something artful. As with his productions of "Bridesmaids" (2011) and this year's undervalued "The Five-Year Engagement," Apatow and his collaborators have fashioned material that for some may even have been too stressful to endure but for my tastes and sensibilities, have hit my sweet spot as they have also done their part to elevate the tepid state of romantic comedies to its once lustrous status as depicting real people with real emotions behaving in realistic ways. With "This Is 40," Apatow, using the fullness of his writing/directorial hands, has fashioned his finest work yet as the comedy is infused with a newfound poeticism and exquisite pain that should be recognizable to anyone who chooses to view this film.
Those aforementioned bodily aches and pains rear their ugly heads as Debbie and Pete feverishly try to outrun mortality through intense bouts of exercise (Debbie's work with a personal trainer and her combined fascination and jealousy with the younger Megan Fox's physique plus Pete with his ritualistic bicycling buddies). Debbie tries to quit smoking while Pete feebly attempts to curb his cupcake habit, both with the hopes of rewriting their potential dark futures. With their shared love of music, Pete and Debbie's personal tastes have divided grandly. Debbie, prefers to dance in hip-hop clubs and favors music designed for teenagers. Yet, Pete soldiers on, like a music industry Don Quixote, with the rock heroes of his youth celebrating rock as art in favor of all flashes in the pan but to his financial strain. The two each wonder about life without the other (they have a simultaneously tender, hilarious yet viscous discussion about how they would kill the other). Another lovely sequence shows Pete and Debbie taking a romantic getaway for an evening, rekindling their passions, only to have that afterglow destroyed within mere moments of returning home. Yet another beautiful sequence showed the long lingering after effects of one blazing showdown between Pete and Debbie, even beyond a shared victory in the Principal's office at Sadie's school. The two walk out of school together, laughing cautiously, sharing a few conciliatory words and just at the moment we think they will, at least, take hands in forgiveness again, they separate, walking to their individual cars.
Judd Apatow perfectly captures the sense of private pain and quiet desperation of people who are just trying to live life upon their own terms but who keep running up against life's unforgiving obstacles, especially how the fears of losing everything that you had worked for unleashes near debilitating fears of failure at life. I loved how Apatow presents Pete retiring to the family bathroom with his i-pad to get maybe 30 minutes of peace and quiet. That was a particularly sharp running gag, especially as I am a person whose rare moments of solitude are driving in my car. Yet another moment, which finds Pete, late at night in his car in a moment of solitary anguish over his financial instability and what it would mean for his family, his life and the dreams he has housed for his entire life hit like a punch in the gut.
Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann have tremendous chemistry and completely look, feel, live and breathe as a convincing couple with a history and a baggage. You entirely understand how and why they love each other as equally as you understand how and why they often want to tear each other apart. Judd Apatow has given us a couple that can easily exist in a very real world and he obviously has no desire of creating another unrealistic fantasy couple in a candyfloss motion picture. As wonderful as Paul Rudd is throughout "This Is 40," Leslie Mann is true cinematic "lighting in a bottle." For years now, I have often wondered why she has not been plucked away and placed into other films by other filmmakers. That being said, I almost wonder if any other filmmakers other than Judd Apatow would even know how to harness her specialized brand of unpredictable energy which runs the gamut from infuriating, understanding, sexy, hilarious, coy, emotionally brutal and self-lacerating. Mann is an absolute wonder and completely functions as a realistic 21st century woman, the very kind I know and work with daily...and the very kind I am certain most of you happen to be in your own lives.
As with many of Judd Apatow's films he has again run into the criticism that perhaps "This Is 40" has a heftier running time than necessary. At two hours and fifteen minutes, yes, "This Is 40" runs long but for me, I am thrilled that Judd Apatow is a filmmaker who uses a wider canvas to possess a true point of view and artistic vision that runs counterpoint to the anonymous, impersonal 90 minute running timed pieces of forgettable dreck that typically litters our theaters. Additionally, Apatow is so much more skilled than I think that some have given him credit for as what appears to be undisciplined and rambling, actually perfectly captures the rhythms of life as it is lived, especially in a film like this one that is almost defiantly without plot and houses an episodic structure that goes down several conceptual alleys and roads simultaneously...much like life itself.
For some who just want to laugh, "This Is 40" does indeed deliver the goods but it also may prove to be a more melancholy experience as the disappointments of life are at times more present than the successes. But, I urge you to not let this fact stop you from being re-introduced to the lives of Pete, Debbie, their family and friends and their collective hopes, failures, fears and dreams.
Judd Apatow's "This Is 40" is a rich tapestry of characters, music, comedy, tragedy and a host of emotions that are recognizable to us all and how much easier the bitterness of life, no matter what age we happen to be, is to take when we are all able to step back and laugh.
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