MasterChugs Theater: ‘The 40 Year-Old Virgin’

The 40 Year-Old Virgin is, first and foremost, a coming out party for Steve Carell. The one-time Daily Show correspondent has made a name for himself by stealing the show in such movies as Bruce Almighty and Anchorman. It was only a matter of time before he was asked to carry one on his own, and The 40 Year-Old Virgin proves he has the chops to pull it off. With the yeoman aid of director Judd Apatow, he develops his faux-newsman routine into a much different comic persona that may launch him into the big leagues.

Andy Stitzer, his awkward title character, is the sort of figure that most have more in common with than they’d care to admit. He rides his bike to work at an electronics store, where his co-workers ignore him or speculate that he might be a serial killer. He goes home to an apartment full of collectible action figures and lives an aimless–though not entirely unhappy–life without the affections of a woman. Any woman. At all. When his colleagues invite him to an all-night poker game, the truth of his sexual status inadvertently comes out, and they resolve to help him get over the hump (so to speak). The humor derives mainly from the fact that 1) Andy’s new friends aren’t quite the experts they think they are and 2) he’s made his peace with his virginity and really doesn’t want them tearing open old wounds.

Too bad.

With an overzealous determination to get him laid, they fill Andy’s mind with the crudest and least helpful advice for picking up women. It should come as no surprise that none of these guys is in a serious relationship. So, when they take Andy to a trendy bar or a lunchtime dating seminar, it’s no wonder that he’s unable to land a date. In fact, most of these experiences turn out to be utter disasters for the sympathetic Andy.

Andy actually lands his first date on his own. He meets Trish, the relationship-experienced owner of a small shop across the street from Smart Tech. The pair instantly hit it off–she’s just as goofy as he is eccentric. After several dates, it’s clear that this relationship is destined to be unlike those initiated with Andy’s co-worker’s assistance. The only question that remains is how will Trish respond to Andy’s little secret.

On the surface, the movie assembles a collection of ethnic types as varied as Crash. It has fun with them, but it likes them, and it’s gentle fun that looks for humanity, not cheap laughs. Consider the character who unexpectedly performs a Guatemalan love song, or Andy’s neighbors, who like to watch “Survivor” with him, although he has to bring the set. The movie approaches the subject of homosexuality without the usual gay-bashing, in a scene where the guys trade one-liners beginning “I know you’re gay because” and their reasons show more insight than prejudice.

But the best reason the movie works is because Steve Carell and Catherine Keener have a rare kind of chemistry that is maybe better described as mutual sympathy. Keener is an actress at the top of her form, and to see her in Lovely & Amazing and The Ballad of Jack and Rose and then in Virgin is to watch an actress who starts every role with a complete understanding of the woman inside. Her task in the plot is to end Andy’s virginity, but her challenge is to create a relationship we care about. We do. The character Trish is intuitively understanding, but more importantly, she actually likes this guy. Keener’s inspiration is to have Trish see Andy not as a challenge, but as an opportunity.

While this may have been Apatow’s first attempt at directing a movie, you can’t really tell. Andy may be discombobulated by sex, but so is everyone else in the movie. When his boss comes on to him like the dirtiest divorcée on a cruise ship, it’s not just a cheap gag. She too joins the circle of those ruled, and undermined, by the foolishness of desire. Andy’s wooing of Trish is a fairy-tale courtship, but Carell and Keener fuse their contrasting skittishness into a moonstruck neurotic connection, and when Andy does finally act to confront his problem, it’s a glorious release indeed: a nerd’s love-in.

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