This Is 40 (MA). Director: Judd Apatow. Starring: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Albert Brooks, John Lithgow, Melissa McCarthy, Jason Segel, Megan Fox. 134 minutes
2007's Knocked Up, about an unlikely couple and an unplanned pregnancy, defined the modern-day Hollywood 'comedy for grown-ups' noted for their frank portrayal of adult relationships. It featured a subplot about married couple Debbie (Mann) and Pete (Rudd), whose marital woes served as a cautionary example for their younger counterparts. Five years later, that film's writer-director revisits Debbie and Pete as they approach 40.
This Is 40 finds Debbie and Pete on the brink of this ominous milestone and still struggling to 'make it work'. There are pressures from within the family unit — familiarity is testing their physical intimacy; their daughters, one of whom is newly a teenager, are testing their own boundaries and their parents' patience — and from without — self-made music executive Pete's label is going down the tubes; his mooching father (Brooks) is a pro at emotional blackmail; Debbie's dress shop appears to have fallen victim to a staff member's sticky fingers.
Apatow explores the tensions and occasional blow-outs caused by these various factors, and the minor reconciliations and moments of intimacy in between, in a characteristically laconic manner. Like most of his films, This Is 40 sprawls to more than two hours, with the actors given plenty of space to improvise both in pursuit of laughs and in order to explore every corner of the characters' emotional make-up, psyche and relationships.
In a way it does the film a disservice to note that Mann is Apatow's wife, and that their daughters Maude and Iris Apatow play Pete and Debbie's daughters Sadie and Charlotte respectively. It makes it seem like a vanity project in a way that distracts from the convincing and naturalistic performances of the two girls, and from Mann's own comedic and dramatic range; she and Rudd certainly nail the intense if weary chemistry of a long-wed couple.
Don't be put off by reviews deriding the film's preponderance of fart jokes. There is one, but it's barely a joke. Pete's bedtime flatulence highlights a certain affable insensitivity on his part, and exacerbates Debbie's unease at the shape intimacy has taken in their relationship. Apatow's comedies are characterised by unified bittiness; each 'bit' develops a character or riffs on the main theme. And that includes 'the bit where Pete farts in bed'.
In truth This Is