2K Replay: THE 40 YEAR-OLD VIRGIN

 by Adam Riske

Nominated for “Best On-Screen Team” (Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, Romany Malco) at the MTV Movie Awards. They lost to Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers.

• Best Scene/Moment: There’s a lot to choose from, but I’ll go with when Seth Rogen instructs “Be David Caruso in Jade” and Steve Carell answers “Oh, ok, I know exactly what you’re talking about.”

• Best Song (tie): “Red Light Special” by TLC and “Rump Shaker” by Wreckx-n-Effect.

• Best Merch: A “The 40 Year-Old Virgin…Talking Keychain…” for $9.99. It will make you immediately more popular. It contains the following phrases.

• “Do you like to do it yourself?”
• “Bow chicca bow chicca bow bow bow! Yeah! Ha ha!”
• “Hope you have a big trunk ‘cause I’m putting my bike in it”
• “Is it true that if you don’t use it, you lose it?”
• “(Oww!!) That one hurt. That one hurt just as much as the first.”

• Director Grade: The 40 Year-Old Virgin was directed by Judd Apatow.
Great Movies: The 40 Year-Old Virgin
Good Movies: Knocked Up, Funny People, Trainwreck
OK Movies: The King of Staten Island
Bad Movies: This is 40
Unseen By Me: The Bubble
Overall Grade: B+

• Double It with This 2005 Movie: Wedding Crashers

• Year 2005 Movies to Trailer Before Them: The Baxter, Fun with Dick and Jane, Kicking & Screaming

• Never Talk to Strangers or The 40 Year-Old Virgin? The 40 Year-Old Virgin

• Mall Movie? Probably. This was a sort of juvenile (in a good way) high concept comedy from up-and-coming stars in the genre (like Judd Apatow, Steve Carell, and Seth Rogen) and comedies that launch future stars usually start up at the mall.

• Only in 2005: Me being hurt that there was a joke making fun of people for liking Coldplay.

• Scene Stealer (tie): Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, and Romany Malco.

• I Miss: Theatrical comedy movies. We get one here and there but it’s not like it was 20 years ago.

• I Don’t Miss: 2000s comedies having unrated cuts that often took them over 2 hours if they weren’t already over 2 hours.

• 2005 Crush (tie): Elizabeth Banks and Kat Dennings.

• 2025 Crush (tie): Elizabeth Banks and Kat Dennings.

• What I Thought in 2005: I loved the movie back in 2005. It was a late August release that I saw with low expectations, and it turned out to be one of the times I’d laughed the hardest at a comedy in theaters. It made me immediately interested in everything Steve Carell, Judd Apatow, Paul Rudd, and Seth Rogen were doing in comedy.

• What I Think in 2025: I was worried The 40 Year-Old Virgin would age poorly but it’s still a really funny movie and one of my favorite movies of 2005. A lot of the credit needs to go to Steve Carell, who brings the right amount of sweetness to his character to offset all of the frat boy humor. Catherine Keener is also really great, and her contributions go pretty unsung when this movie’s discussed.