Scribbler's Rave & Favorite Five: Tuesday Night at the Movies, #1 The 40-Year-Old Virgin

When you see previews for a movie, it's a crap shoot; some movies are exactly what they appear to be while others are either much better or precipitously worse than expected.  I knew that The 40-Year-Old would be special just from the trailer, but neither did I expect it to be a lifelong fanatic over it nor that it would eventually become my favorite movie ever.  Now I have many friends and fellow movie buffs who totally understand why The 40-Year-Old Virgin tops the list because they spit out their milk several times watching it.  However, I'm sure that there are those of you who have stayed the course with this edition of my "Rave & Favorite Five" and are thinking, "You had Friday, The Last Dragon and Coming to America on this list...you mean to tell me that this is your No. 1 movie of all time?!?!"  To the latter section of the population, I say two things: 1) it's my countdown and 2) have we met?!?!  If you've ever seen this movie and know half of what you claim to know about me, then how can you not think of me when the plot has me written all over it?  Furthermore, no matter what kind of day, week, month or year I've been having, this has always been one of those movies that has never not been funny.  Nevertheless, allow me to fill in the blank if you're still drawing one as I present my five favorite things about The 40-Year-Old Virgin...

#5 IT'S MY FAVORITE THING THAT STEVE CARELL HAS EVER DONE.  Don't get me wrong, Steve Carell was brilliant as Michael Scott in NBC's hit series, The Office.  I even enjoyed him in other movies like Bruce Almighty, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Evan Almighty, Dan in Real Life, Date Night, Crazy, Stupid, Love., and as Gru in the Despicable Me series--which might be my second favorite thing that he's ever done.  However, despite his illustrious 25-year acting career, he will always be Andy Stitzer in my eyes.  The dude who went over a meticulously mind-numbing itinerary of his weekend that involved making an egg salad sandwich and used the word "accoutrement" in a sentence.  The dude with perpetual boners, including calling an outsourced guy about how to get rid of his erection despite not popping a blue pill.  The dude with a framed Asia poster, endless video games and "a billion toys" that included the Six Million Dollar Man's boss, Oscar Goldman.  The dude who is affectionately known as "Mr. Schwinn F-----g Armstrong".  The dude who tried manscaping and screamed out Kelly Clarkson's name in agony.  The dude who took Dave's (Paul Rudd) Box o' Porn, lit candles and tried to masturbate to Lionel Richie's "Hello" only to end up watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond instead.  He will always be the dude who dated the "hot grandma", didn't know how to put on a condom and played with one of them saying, "I am Aquaman."  The dude who took the rap for his boy Jay (Romany Malco) and dropped some critical "we got that ignorant sh-- you like" lines such as "you should keep your ho on a leash...b-----s running wild, man" and "yeah, I remember that girl...she was a ho...for sho".  The dude who got drunk and told a potential jump-off, "Hope you have a big trunk because I'm putting my bike in it!"  I've been known to say that I wouldn't be mad if someone ended their career on a particular performance and Steve Carell's starring role in The 40-Year-Old Virgin is his tour de force.  As for his writing partner-in-crime for this masterpiece...

#4 IT'S MY FAVORITE THING THAT JUDD APATOW HAS EVER DONE.  The coincidence in writing a post about Judd Apatow's directorial debut is the fact that one of the last things that I watched before writing this was his documentary directorial debut (with Michael Bonfiglio) via "Doc & Daryl", a compelling look into the lives of Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry and their run with the New York Mets of the 1980s as part of ESPN's 30 for 30 series.  With directing, producing and writing credits in like 90 percent of my favorite comedies of the past 20 to 25 years like Happy Gilmore, The Cable Guy, Liar Liar, The Wedding Singer, Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby, Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, You Don't Mess With the Zohan, Step Brothers, Pineapple Express and Bridesmaids, this man has done and can do little to no wrong in my eyes.  Truth be told, it is really difficult to catapult The 40-Year-Old Virgin ahead of the aforementioned movies because they're all dope boy fresh.  However, Apatow not only helped Carell write one of the best scripts that either of them have ever had, but it's the sharpest and wittiest that his director's eye has ever been.  He was able to maximize the chemistry between all of his characters in each scene as if they all grew up in the same neighborhood--I'll dig more into that later--allowed them to seemingly freestyle at points (especially in the unrated version which is the only version that matters) and play on the obvious and subtle comedic moments that really drove the movie home.  I don't know if The 40-Year-Old Virgin is Apatow's creative "baby", but he should strongly consider it...

#3 THE PLOT IS RIDICULOUS ENOUGH TO BE TRUE.  One of the biggest reasons why this movie caught my attention was because it was about a 40-year-old man who had never had sex, largely because all of his previous attempts crashed and burned.  Hence, all of Andy's newfound friends at Smart Tech developed elaborate plans to help him do the deed from running through a bunch of "hood rats" so that he could be at least "mediocre at best" to "hitting on drunk b-----s" to even inadvertently setting him up with a private party with a transsexual.  Although the only 40-something-year-old dude who I recall was a virgin was Robert Parrish, it felt like that would be my fate for a long time during adolescence and young adulthood.  During a good amount of my teenage years, abstinence until marriage was an actual choice for me because having to live up to the unrealistic pressure placed upon me as a young man growing up in the sexually-charged 90s was so daunting and intimidating that even tongue kissing seemed dirty to me.  (Planet Fitness has lunk alarms...well, Planet NPT has dork alarms and they're always going off when I'm around.)  Much like Andy comparing the feel of a woman's breasts to a bag of sand, I was completely clueless regarding many aspects of sex--particularly incorrectly answering the infamous "what color is nut" question with "brown", not realizing that my classmates were talking about semen and not the sac.  (I probably still can't live that one down.  The alarm is getting louder.)  In fact, cut his age in half and exclude most of his awkward intimate encounters and that's what it felt like for me in college because not only were my boys cheering for me to finally score, but there were also plenty of girls who were trying to take a crack at me.  In retrospect, I was no different than Andy because after a while, it felt like losing my virginity was less about having my Fourth of July in D.C. moment and more about everyone else wanting a play-by-play description of what color the panties were.  (I know, different movie that got bumped out of the countdown, but you get the picture.)  Although I missed that 40-year-old mark by 20 years, I still felt Andy's pain once upon a time--blue balls and all... 

#2 THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN WAS GREAT NOT ONLY BECAUSE IT SPRUNG SEVERAL CAREERS, BUT ALSO BECAUSE NO ONE FELT OUT OF PLACE.  Whenever I think of chemistry and the saying "this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship", two casts come to mind: 1) The Big Bang Theory and 2) The 40-Year-Old Virgin.  Aside from Steve Carell really hitting his stride in 2005 with this and the debut of The Office, my favorite movie of all time also helped to either catapult or solidify the careers of Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Leslie Mann, Jane Lynch, Romany Malco, Mindy Kaling, Jonah Hill and Kat Dennings.  It was like they formed an unofficial 40-Year-Old Virgin Alumni Association as they forged a cohesive bond in television and film for the next decade and shared their comedic synergy with the rest of the world.  Even the people who didn't end up with the same amount of notoriety or played smaller roles still fit right into the craziness.  One of my favorite characters was Mooj (Gerry Bednob) with his hilarious exchange with Jay over stealing customers ("you're f-----g with the wrong sun-n----r, okay" and "I was born in Brooklyn...my accent is a f-----g Brooklyn accent") and telling Andy what sex is not about from the "rusty trombone" to the "dirty Sanchez" to the "Cincinnati bowtie".  (I'm pretty sure that I still don't know what half of those things are unless I've done them and never knew the names for them, which means I'm not as Andy as I think I am.)  Every woman at Andy's speed dating table from the small-town woman whose breast popped out of her shirt in the middle of rambling to Gina (pronounced like "vagina") who "spent a lot of time with the ladies" and was "looking to get back up on that pogo stick".  Then there's the family health clinic scene when Andy takes Marla (Kat Dennings) to learn more about sex and gets in a group of predominantly hypermasculine teenage boys and their fathers--the funniest duo being a Jewish father and his son where the dad sons him with "oh yeah, you'd 'tap that'...you think you're cool with your little Jew fro" and "Seth, you got a tiny penis" when his eager kid asked for extra-large condoms.  No matter the level of the billing or the length of the scene, everybody made this film an indelible success--which 1) must be attributed to Marla Garlin and Allison Jones for being casting masters and 2) is the perfect segue to my absolute favorite thing about The 40-Year-Old Virgin...

#1 "TODAY'S FORECAST: DARK & CLOUDY AND CHANCE OF DRIVE-BY."  As many movies and stand-up routines that Kevin Hart has done--and it seems like he's doing a new project as often as people change draws--playing the Smart Tech customer with a Napoleon complex looking for the hook-up is still the funniest two minutes of this man's entire career, let me tell it.  In every movie featured on this countdown, there is that one scene for which you will sit through the entire movie.  In Blade Runner, it's the last scene when Batty saves Deckard's life and gets sentimental before it's "time to die"; in Friday, it's when Craig earns his manhood against Deebo; in The Last Dragon, it's all about the final fight between Leroy and Sho'Nuff and "the glow"; and in Coming to America, it's the Black Awareness Rally with Reverend Brown, Randy Watson and Sexual Chocolate.  In The 40-Year-Old Virgin amidst so many great scene, the showdown between Kevin Hart and Romany Malco is one of the most farcical displays that I've ever seen in a comedy.  Now usually, I list different quotes from different scenes, but this one scene has like all of my favorite lines and the physical comedy is top notch as evidence in the GIF above.  If you've never seen any two minutes of this movie, just click here and this should serve as enough proof why you need to see the rest of the movie because there isn't enough space or time for me to share every line from this scene.  If you're not laughing at even a moderate level, then I'm convinced that your alleged sense of humor can be found where those weapons of mass destruction are.  I mean, come on...even the way that Kevin Hart walks out of the store screaming "it don't f-----g matter" when Andy asks what he did to get included in getting "clapped up" is waggish.  Yeah, I sense a 40-Year-Old Virgin night on the horizon soon...

So now that I've revealed my favorite movie of all time, you can exercise one of two options.  Option #1: if you're a huge fan of The 40-Year-Old Virgin like I am--although I'm sure that NONE of my readers are a bigger fan than I am--then please share some of your favorite things about it.  Option #2: whether it's a part of your top five or nah, please feel free to share your favorite five movies of all time.  Don't forget to come back soon for the next edition of "Scribbler's Rave & Favorite Five"!!!