There's just something about Steve Carell. Maybe it's his vaguely blank way of staring out at you on the promotional posters for The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Or maybe it's his ability to eat a big red candle as Brick Tamland in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. But however you look at it, Carell is fast making a career out of playing lovably "incomplete" men.
In The 40 Year-Old Virgin, a movie that actually can extend that one joke throughout an entire running time Carell is lead man as Andy Stitzer. Directed by Judd Apatow and co-written by Carell himself, the movie opens in Andy's apartment -- a shrine to perpetual adolescence complete with mint-condition action figure collections large enough to make any Hopkins engineer proud. We go on to learn that despite Andy's slightly arrested development, he is the prototypical nice guy: He rides his bike to work at a nearby electronics store, hangs out with his elderly neighbors and is pure and wholesome enough to knock Mary Tyler Moore for a loop.
But once Andy's low-brow co-workers realize his purity is not indicative of psychotic mass murdering tendencies but of massive sexual inexperience -- tipped off by his comparison of a woman's breast to a "bag of sand", they set out to get their pal laid. They first drag him to a nightclub in search of drunk women with cravings for French toast and then hire a prostitute that may or may not actually be a woman. In the meantime, Andy is slowly wooing single mom Trish (Catherine Keener) with more conventional romantic tactics. He even convinces her teenage daughter that is he sort of, well, cool.
One of the most memorable scenes is Andy's chest waxing, which I was horrified to learn was not acting at all but Carell actually getting his hair ripped off. To me, this only adds to Carell's extremely likeable presence and his "anything for a joke attitude." During Carell's tenure at "The Daily Show," he once ate a spoonful of Crisco for a sketch just to see Jon Stewart's horrified reaction.
The 40 Year-Old Virgin does its best to be a "frat pack" movie like this summer's Wedding Crashers or last summer's Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, but it turns out more like a slightly perverse romantic comedy. Carell manages to pull off the lead role and hold the picture together by being naively charming amid his co-workers' occasional bursts of raunchiness. However, his supporting characters don't have what it takes to provide truly side-splitting improvisation or delivery that would pepper the plot. One can only wonder what the film would have been like had the supporting roles filled by other players in Carell's comedy team, like Will Ferrel or Luke Wilson.
While The 40 Year-Old Virgin delivers its share of memorable one-liners, which college kids can quote ad nausea, this movie surprisingly lacks good-quality dirty jokes. For a movie about sex, The 40 Year-Old Virgin is startlingly more sweet than sour. Yet, Carell's debut as a front man is not in vain. Funny, competent, thoughtful, Virgin follows an innocent nerd through the mire of America's hyper-sexed culture.
The 40 Year-Old Virgin
Starring: Steve Carell, Katherine Keener,Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen
Director: Judd Apatow
Run Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Rating: R
Showing at: AMC Towson Commons, R/C Hollywood Cinema
