Film Review: This is 40

Figured this film might be good for me given I'm turning 40 this year myself.

This is 40 is a Judd Apatow written, produced and directed film.  So you know a bit of what you are going to get when you go into it.  Like Knocked Up, 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, etc. you get the pot jokes, dysfunctional personal lives, rapid fire dialogue, lots of profanities, lots of humorous sexual situations and scatological humor.

When written and done well by Apatow, his films are really funny in an "I'm embarrassed for the character sort of way" and can provide a great deal of sly commentary on modern American life.  When not done as well it becomes self indulgent and stupid, creating scenes and situations that don't connect and merely appear to be a number of semi-humourous sketches put together without much thought.

Its the second of these scenarios that This is 40 fulfills.  Paul Rudd and Apatow's wife Leslie Mann play the lead couple who are both turning forty years old and are dealing with two daughters and disasters of relationships with their parents.  We get all the typical middle age cliche issues.  Boring sex lives, wondering what would have happened if they hadn't ended up together, kids who don't appreciate what they have...and then we get all the new jokes that are already cliches for our current age--jokes about iPhones, iPads, iPods, etc. and the difference between today's electronic entertainment and the "playing with sticks" we used to do.  There really isn't anything new here.  The jokes have been updated to modern versions but they don't bring up anything new.  What is new is the constant whining and moaning the 40 year olds do.

God, if This is 40, is representative of what I will feel upon entering my 40s--shoot me now.  The characters are giant balls of miserable...about their life, their spouses, their kids, their family.  Hell, I know that this is set up this way in order to try to come to a conservative and happy resolution at the end (as all comedies are inherently conservative) but still...There is little here to make you happy about your future existence...and if a comedy can't make you happy...then it fails...

Maybe This is 40 is 40 for some people....but it sure as hell ain't for me...