The 40 Year Old Virgin

Judd Apatow’s film grew out of a sketch Steve Carell developed at Second City and was nearly cancelled in its first days. Universal stopped production on the third day. The complaints: Carell looked like a serial killer in the glasses and jacket, Rudd was too heavy, the lighting was not comedy bright, and there was too much improvising. Every scene that triggered the shutdown is in the film. The chest waxing works the same way: genuine, covered like documentary footage, and what Carell shouts is improvisation off lists Apatow called out between strips. The length comes from letting exchanges run rather than from incident: the unrated DVD of December 2005 adds seventeen minutes without altering the story. The engine is that the friends give bad advice. Their suggestions are tried and fail one at a time, so the film moves in episodes and holds no single line until Trish arrives, and it admits the advice was wrong only in the last stretch. Until then the joke and its target are one man. A good fit if an unfaked waxing and a reaction invented on the spot count as method. Less so if you assume the video game argument between Rudd and Rogen still sits where it did; Apatow turned down an advertisement rebuilding it, saying it would not work.