Film Review: This Is 40 (3.5/5.0)

Barely has this latest film from enfant terrible Judd Apatow begun and his real-life wife Leslie Mann is telling ‘the big 4-0’ exactly where to go; it can suck an appendage she doesn’t have. You get the drift. We are in Apatow-land where a point is often conveyed with a crude slap in the face and where nothing is sacred.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

And so we revisit Debbie (Mann) and Pete (Paul Rudd) some five years after we first met them as the sister and brother-in-law of Katherine Heigl’s reluctant mum-to-be in Apatow’s Knocked Up.

In this ‘sort of’ sequel – there’s no mention of Heigl or Seth Rogen’s charcters from the original – Debbie and Pete both happen to be turning 40 in the same week. Debbie is in denial, insisting she’s actually turning 38 while Pete seems resigned to impending middle age, for now.

Much like many parents, they’re finding raising their children somewhat of a combat zone - Sadie (Maude Apatow) is now a raging teen, youngest Charlotte (Iris Apatow) is full of cheek – and the generational gap only illuminates their lack of hipness. Meanwhile both Debbie and Pete’s respective businesses are struggling, they’re living beyond their means and their fathers' (Albert Brooks and John Lithgow adding some veteran comic flair) are each a source of tension.

So the stage is set for what is a very humorous look at what it means to arrive at middle age. And nothing’s off limits; from Viagra to turn-your-head-and-cough physicals, mammograms, anal abnormalities, the perky breasts of youth and the elastic effect of childbirth.

No, This Is 40 is not a subtle film but it does wring many laugh-out-loud moments out of its protagonists’ coming to terms with aging and some blackly comic observations about parenthood (loving and hating your kids all at once) and marriage (Pete and Debbie divulge graphically how they'd like to kill each other). There’s some great, very knowing dialogue with Apatow seemingly funneling his own insight of family life straight from the source, all with his trademark cutting sense of humour.

Mann has said she and Apatow wanted to represent a relationship as it truly is, unfurnished with Hollywood clichés. They almost succeed. This Is 40 with its dual mid life crisis writ large is undoubtedly honest - blisteringly so - but it can’t escape it’s Hollywood roots with sentimentality creeping through, another Apatowian trait.

And This Is 40 isn’t exactly “everyone’s story” as it purports to be in the film’s trailer. After all, Mann and Rudd are two mighty good looking specimens who look as if they should have nothing to complain about, at least not physically. But that’s also part of the gag perhaps. As Bridesmaid’s Melissa McCarthy, playing a rabid parent in a school spat with Debbie and Pete points out “They look like they’re in a bank commercial”.

We’re soon reminded they’re not perfect, far from it. But it is nice to be reunited with these characters again - as obscene and unlikeable as they can be - because they’re played so well by Mann and Rudd, two great complimentary comedic foils with their chemistry still strong.

They’re well bolstered by supporting players including Bridesmaid’s Chris O’Dowd and McCarthy, Megan Fox (Friends With Kids) and Jason Segel who returns as Jason, a stoner in Knocked Up now transformed as a perky personal trainer.

'This Is 40' doesn’t really break any new ground but in its exploration of aging, relationships and parenthood, it makes for a knowing, naughty and side-splitting interlude.

Film: 3.5/5.0 stars

Starring: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Albert Brooks, John Lithgow, Chris O’Dowd. 

Director: Judd Apatow.

Written By: Judd Apatow.

Rated: MA 15+

Genre: Comedy

Year: 2012

Run Time: 134 minutes.

Out: Now.