The 40 Year Old Virgin

Herald rating: * * *

The 40 Year Old Virgin is a comedy about exactly that, and even though it sounds lame, and the gags are as predictable as the ones running through your head right now, this film is surprisingly funny.

This is comedy writer and producer Judd Apatow's (Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy) first attempt at directing and he does a great job balancing the crude one-liners, silly sight gags and lurid behaviour alongside a sweet story about a middle-aged couple falling in love.

Steve Carell (Anchorman) is our virgin hero Andy Stitzer and is, as you'd expect, a man with boyish charms. Nice, neat and tidy and socially inept. He looks five years younger thanks to never having to deal with a relationship - instead he collects action figures and likes riding his bicycle.

When his Electronics Superstore co-workers, an eclectic group of men who all view love and sex differently, discover he is a virgin, they do the best they can to get him laid, turning his life upside down.

From here on in it's not difficult to imagine the gags: trying to put on a condom, being set up with a prostitute, speed dating, and picking up an inebriated young woman at a nightclub who is visibly heading for a vomit. In among the crass chaos, Andy meets and falls for Trish (Keener), a 40-year-old single mother of three, but still there's still no sex in sight.

An adult version of American Pie, The 40 Year Old Virgin has its fair share of embarrassing moments, but instead of making the audience cringe, Apatow and Carell (who co-wrote the script) make our geeky hero endearing.

The 40 Year Old Virgin isn't perfect. It drags for the first half, is 20 minutes too long, and caters to the teenage DVD hiring audience when it should have stuck with the adult approach, but it will make you laugh out loud.

CAST: Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Romany Malco, Seth Rogen
DIRECTOR: Judd Apatow
RUNNING TIME: 115 Minutes
RATING: R16, contains offensive language, drug use and sexual content
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts and Berkeley Cinemas