With his naive, open face, Steve Carell is a perfect fit for Andy Stitzer, the sheltered man-child who is at the heart of The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
It's an often funny, often over-the-brink comedy whose raunchy central joke revolves around attempts to find a sex partner for a man who hasn't been able to get started. Surprisingly, although it's basically a long sex joke told with few holds barred, The 40-Year-Old Virgin is ultimately a sweet-natured and even heartwarming tale.
Because it's a saga of fear, awkwardness and plain bad luck, the film is certain to ring many bells. Most of us have felt pangs of uncertainty, trepidation and inconsequentiality. And so despite more than occasional lapses into plain bad taste, The 40-Year-Old Virgin is touching, even though most of us have overcome the timidity of Carell's Andy Stitzer long before they've reached their fourth decade.
Andy, however, has not. A lively weekend for him is spending hours and hours fixing egg salad.
His apartment shelves are lined with collectible action figures -- Spider-Man, Aquaman, etc. -- all in their original packaging. They're worth more that way, Andy says, although he would never think of selling them.
Between building and painting plastic models of knights and airplanes, playing video games, watching TV with his elderly neighbors and bicycling to a tech store in the San Fernando Valley where he's a stockroom clerk, there's not much more time for anything else, least of all women. In flashback we see some of Andy's disastrous earlier encounters with the opposite sex which, understandably, have sent him into a celibate state.
Andy tries to be "one of the boys" at work, but during a round of tell-all sexual one-upmanship during a poker game with his co-workers, he blurts out something that leads them to accidentally discover his virginity. The rest of the film revolves around their attempts to fix him up with a hot date, even though each of them have their own mixed-up problems with the opposite sex.
They include David (Paul Rudd), who has sworn off women after being dumped by his girlfriend two years earlier; Jay (Romany Malco), who still plays the field despite his longtime girlfriend; and Cal (Seth Rogen), a bear of a man who loves the weed more than romance and is always looking for sexual escapades in the wrong places. Despite their own poor track records, they're a sort of Greek chorus who egg Andy on.
As they push Andy toward wrongheaded hookups with women who seem inappropriate for his gentle nature, Andy finds himself drawn to an even-tempered woman -- Catherine Keener's generous and kind Trish -- and begins tentatively pursuing her on his own.
Carell's background as a deadpan correspondent for Comedy Central's The Daily Show and the full-of-himself boss of NBC's The Office, flavors the outrageous, often politically incorrect lines of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which he co-wrote with director Judd Apatow. At one point, Andy makes a pointed rebuke in the cadence of the 'hood to a black woman who has been putting him down.
Sometimes Carell and Apatow go overboard and overbroad in a grab for laughs, including a wackily forced and too-long wild ride in a car driven by a totally drunk woman, although this ends on a delirious bad-taste note. Some of the situations involving Andy's co-workers are a stretch that don't pan out.
But other things hit the mark. A sequence in which Andy, at the urgings of his buddies, has his hairy chest waxed is painfully funny. A sly scene between Carell and Elizabeth Banks, as a pretty potential conquest, is played chirpily using a string of double entendres. A game of "I know you're gay because . . ." between two of Andy's co-workers scores strongly. A sequence at a Planned Parenthood meeting, in which Andy wins the respect of Trish's teenage daughter for his honesty, is a salute to lunacy, thanks to the crazies in the group.
Carell, who always looks a little uncertain and antsy as Andy, is such a likable geek that he pulls you into his oddball corner. Like a puppy trying to find his way, Andy's stumbling attempts at romance with Trish are winning.
Keener plays Trish as a sort of Earth Mother who accepts Andy's foibles and flubs with her generous nature. A rocky road to romance lies ahead, but as in all good romantic comedies, one wants them to succeed. A wonderful fantasy sequence played to the tune "Let the Sun Shine In" sums up all of Andy's aspirations.
***1/2
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Starring: Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Romany Malco, Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks.
Rated: R, contains sex, nudity, profanity, drug use, adult themes.
ARTICLE TOOLS: 
