Stupid freaking Judd Apatow, with his stupid freaking foul-mouthed and sentimental Hobbit-length comedies, his stupid freaking insistence on not only peopling them with his old comic cronies, but his wife and cursing kids.
Happy freaking R-rated holidays, America. Heres your Meet the Parents this year: longer and less funny.
This Is 40 the very premise is flawed, since everybody knows 50 is the new 40 is a sort of sequel to Knocked Up that catches up with the struggling, funny and quite real sidekick couple of that film, Debbie and Pete, played by Leslie Mann (Mrs. Apatow) and Paul Rudd.
Its an intermittently amusing dance through generations of bad parenting come home to roost, poor family planning and worse economic planning, when they both hit that milestone birthday, which tells Debbie theyre getting old.
He takes Viagra. She lies about her birthday and insists shes 38. He breaks wind in bed to remind you that Apatow was once Adam Sandlers roommate.
Theyre impulsive, unfiltered folks who cant understand how their daughters (Apatow and Manns real-life kids) have the same potty-mouths they do, who bought too much house, too many cars, spent too much keeping his boutique record label afloat and her clothing boutique running.
And now, at 40, the chickens are coming home to roost.
This Is 40 is more like Apatows excruciating Funny People than Knocked Up.
Apatow has turned more Cameron Crowe (Elizabethtown) since jumping the shark more interested in trying to grapple with big life moments, unable to edit his indulgent movies into anything tighter and funnier.
If This Is 40, one shudders to think what hell serve up when that AARP card arrives in the mail and he and Mann are faced with This Is 50.




