Has Judd Apatow hit his stride, or has he become so successful he's lost touch with reality? That seems to be the narrative running through the overall response to the writer/director/producer's latest film, "This is 40," with most critics split down the middle.
Branded as the "sort of sequel" to "Knocked Up," the film stars Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Albert Brooks, Megan Fox, Jason Segal, John Lithgow, Lena Dunham, and Melissa McCarthy.
With a current score of 50 percent on movie review site Rotten Tomatoes, Apatow's latest has critics debating whether his film's navel-gazing focus makes it a success or a failure, with some arguing the "40-Year-Old Virgin" director is pitching to too narrow of an audience by using the leads in the film as surrogates for his own life, and others saying that same quality is exactly why "This is 40" works so well.
The New York Post thought "This is 40" relied too heavily on loose, improvised, stand-up-styled comedy, and was totally turned off by much of the film's crude humor.
"...No one could be as whiny, spoiled, tasteless, combative and reliant on annoying stand-up comedy riffs as the entire cast of this film, the most disappointing one of the year. In the opening minutes, Apatow's self-indulgence quickly slips into self-abuse, and then into audience abuse...The comic efforts both feel forced and undercut any attempt at drama: If the characters are feeling chipper enough to make their troubles into Laff Factory routines, we can't get worked up about them either," wrote The New York Post in its review.
"Apatow's patented 'outrageous' potty humor is starting to be as funny as a glimpse within grandpa's open hospital gown. There are scenes, plural, with Rudd on the john, which Apatow seems to find automatically hilarious (it isn't), and another with Rudd using a mirror to peer, fascinated, up his own butt. That's as good a metaphor as any for what Apatow is doing," said the Post.
NPR thought "This is 40" was a rare breed of big studio comedy, and applauded Apatow for his unique and explicitly honest style.
"Apatow's strengths and weaknesses are tied to the same impulse to put as much of himself into the film as possible - small, specific moments coexist with broad comic setpieces and emotional meltdowns that wouldn't be out of place in a John Cassavetes movie. Calling it a mess would be both accurate and pointless, because a tidier comedy would squeeze the life out of this vital, generous blob of a film," said NPR in its review.
"With 'This Is 40,' Apatow turns his audience into fitfully chuckling therapists, dealing with a raft of problems that aren't entirely sorted out. Hollywood usually demands an orderliness that Apatow, to his great credit, isn't interested in imposing on his film. This can get enormously frustrating in the wearying stretches where the comedy can't relieve the psychodrama, but it isn't often that material so nakedly personal can fly under the studio banner. His candor should be encouraged," NPR concluded.
The Boston Globe thought "This is 40" revealed Apatows true weakness as a comedic filmmaker: He focuses to much on his own life while attempting to find broad truths, and as a result pitches to tiny niche audience.
"At an overlong 134 minutes, though, the movie increasingly seems like a parade of White People's Problems. Apatow doesn't have the distance of a genuine comic observer of human foibles - a James L. Brooks, for example - and he never breaks out of his bubble, which in this case isn't just Los Angeles, but the upscale Brentwood neighborhood where the filmmaker lives. 'This Is 40' is smart about the things that stall marriages - the way we retreat to corners, nurse grudges, forget how we got here in the first place - but it's blind to any notion that a larger world or other sorts of people might exist," wrote The Boston Globe in its review.
"That may be a more accurate reflection of its maker's outlook than he realizes. I hate to say it, but if Judd Apatow wants to be a seriously funny filmmaker, he may have to leave home."
"This is 40" is out now.
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