This is 40 - Movie review by Joe Calleri.

What:                             This is 40.

Distributor:                   Universal Pictures
Reviewer:                      Joe Calleri
Stars:                              Half a star.

Running at a mind-numbing 134 minutes – yes, you read that right – Judd Apatow’s latest cinematic offering, “This is 40”, should be re-titled “This is Freaking Interminable”.

In an era where the majority of Hollywood films run for 90 minutes or less – film producers know their audiences have notoriously short attention spans - there is just not enough substance to the flimsy, silly plot to justify Apatow stretching this film out to such epic proportions. By comparison, the latest James Bond film “Skyfall” runs a mere 9 minutes longer.

Seriously, this film smells worse than Paul Rudd’s on-screen farts, and is desperately in need of so many repairs including savage editing, drastic re-writing and peppier direction. As writer, director, and producer, Apatow should stand in the dunce’s corner as punishment for failing to elicit even the tiniest of smirks, let alone a laugh of any description from this movie.

The plot for this film could easily have come from one of my all-time favourite television shows, “Thirtysomething”.

Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) are a rather uninteresting, highly dislikeable, self-absorbed, upper middle class, married couple, who live a seemingly comfortable life in an undisclosed town in America (more on this conundrum below), with two equally smug, self-absorbed daughters, Charlotte, 8 and Sadie, 13, portrayed respectively by Iris and Maude Apatow. The girls are cute, and competent enough actresses, I guess. For Judd Apatow, there’s nothing like keeping things in the family.

Pete and Debbie are facing their respective 40^th birthdays during the same week. Judging by their reactions to what should be an enjoyable occasion with much to celebrate, you would think they have been told they have each a week to live. Turning 40 is, according to Pete and Debbie, so terrible that, the couple turn on each other and everyone around them.

As each minute of this movie ground on, I cared less and less about the couple, their children, their friends and families, and dwelled more and more on the many elements in this movie that confounded and frustrated me:

With the exception of Debbie’s gynaecologist, Dr Pellegrino (Tim Bagley), why don’t any of the characters possess surnames?

I touched on this earlier in this review, but, where the heck precisely is this movie set? Last time I checked, Christmas in the United States means cold, snowy weather. Not in Judd world, it’s not. How else could he have conjured up an excuse for Desi (Megan Fox) to swim around in a pool in her bikini? Yes, guys and gals, if you like ogling Megan Fox in various states of undress, then this movie is for you.

How could Debbie entrust the running of her fashion store to Desi and Jodi (Charlyne Yi)? The two girls appear to possess single-figure IQ’s and the morals of alley cats. Desi, we discover is an escort, who can’t count how many men she sees a year, while Jodi is addicted to Oxycontin, and has stolen $10,000.00 from Debbie as a “cry for help”. And, just why does Jodi speak like Gollum when confronted by Debbie over the theft? Does Debbie hand Jodi to the police? Nope. And, why is the plain-looking, bespectacled Asian girl the thief?

How the heck have Albert Brooks (as Peter’s father, Larry) and John Lithgow (as Debbie’s father, Oliver) pulled younger brides and sired young families? In Larry’s case, he has fathered identical blonde triplets. Larry and Oliver are hardly scintillating, athletic sorts. I guess that, older men and younger women must be an Apatow fantasy.

Why is everyone so nasty to each other, and so potty mouthed in this movie? Pete and Debbie even describe their daughters as “bitches”. Let’s pause a moment and remember that, Apatow wrote the script for this movie, so does he regard his own daughters in the same denigrating way?

Memo to Judd Apatow: Who remembers Graham Parker? And, as Graham Parker can’t act to save himself, why give him so much on-screen time?

The scene when Debbie brutally bullies and threatens Joseph, one of Sadie’s teenage classmates is vile. Equally vile is a later scene, when Catherine properly confronts Pete regarding Debbie’s bullying behaviour towards Joseph, and Pete goes to town on Catherine, poking her in the chest to express his displeasure over Catherine’s accusations.

Who thought it a good idea to include an outtake of the uber potty mouthed Melissa McCarthy (as Catherine) spewing her filth at the end of the movie? Had we not suffered enough already?

If you want to watch a heart-warming, genuinely funny, and entertaining cinematic depiction of dysfunctional family life, do yourself a favour and rent or download a copy of Ron Howard’s “Parenthood”.