The 40-Year-Old Virgin vs Jerry Maguire

The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a movie that lives or dies based on its cast. You gotta have just the right guy. Movies like this usually star Ben Stiller or Jim Carrey, or maybe Mike Myers. This time, there's a problem: the main character's age is in the title. Ben Stiller? Jim Carrey? Forty? Surely you're joking! Forty! I mean, really! Four-oh? Sure. Ben Stiller's, what, eighteen? And Jim Carrey? Sir, Jim Carrey is twenty-six if he's a day! Where are you gonna find an actor who a. Will cop to being an adult, and b. Can pass as a virgin? George Clooney is comfortably in his fourth decade, why not him? Uh, you read the title of the movie, right?

Anyway, Steve Carrell got the part, and he's great. Carrell plays Andy, who works in an electronics store, always wears his bike helmet, and takes gentle care of his mint-condition action figure collection. In Carrell's hands, Andy isn't some awkward nerd (well, he's not just that), he's more of an innocent. He's not a child though. It's further testament to Carrell's performance that Andy is fully adult, just minus adult cynicism and plus a kick-ass video game chair. Andy's so shy that he cringes at the idea of working on the sales floor, and most of his coworkers regard him as being nice, but possibly so nice he's creepy. You know the type. Out of desperation, he's invited to fill an absentee seat at poker night. One comment about breasts feeling like bags of sand later, and Andy's been outed as a virgin. From that point on, his new friends make it their mission to get Andy laid. The 40-Year-Old Virgin could have gone into Porky's territory, or maybe American Pie, but it stays rooted in its own version of reality. Sure there are slapstick moments, and both urine and vomit make significant appearances. But The 40-Year-Old Virgin determines to be as sincere and well-mannered as its main character, and the pay-offs are pretty big.

Foremost, Andy's friends aren't the practical-joking frat-guys that usually populate these movies (read the cast list of Tomcats to see what I mean). Instead, we get Seth Rogan, Romany Malco and Paul Rudd, each of whom bring something fresh to what would otherwise have been the same role multiplied by three. Rudd is especially good; it took Hollywood a while to catch on to how funny he is. Rudd plays David, who is the most vocally romantic about Andy losing his virginity, but also the most aggressively bitter. David dated a girl for a few months a couple years ago, and has never gotten over it. When she's finally introduced in the movie, the casting and performance are so great, I'm thinking these two have got to have their own movie some day, with David stalking this poor girl who probably would have forgotten him otherwise.

And of course, Andy gets a few dates, using the advice of his buddies. He's most attracted to Trish, played by Catherine Keener. Trish is surrounded by sex. She's a mother, and a grandmother, and her middle child is literally screaming to have sex, so she considers Andy a breath of fresh air.

Of course, this is ultimately a romantic comedy, so there will be confusion and false endings and romantic comedy hubbub. It stays pretty funny though, probably because it was written and directed by Judd Apatow, who knows a thing or two about human comedy (but not so much about framing certain scenes. Dude, all those apartments look the same. Whose living room are we in again?)

Oh, I almost forgot: Jane Lynch plays Andy's boss at work, and she's hilarious and a total perv.

Andy's childlike nature and his obsession with his bike reminded some of Pee-Wee Herman, but Andy isn't a caricature; he's a real guy. By the end of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, I was reminded more of Jerry Maguire.

Like Andy, Jerry Maguire's in a bit of a rut. He's a high-powered sports agent, and he's soon to marry a hot colleague, so everything seems fine, but it's the same everything over and over, and eventually, there are going to be cracks. Turns out the crack is in Jerry's personality; he has what's basically a nervous breakdown after a fit of conscience drives him to draft this huge memo about sports agents operating more honestly. Of course he loses his job. Jerry's got no friends, barely any clients, and the money's going to run out soon. But, like Andy, he finds friendship in a mother whose life is too complicated already, so she might as well take care of Jerry too.

Jerry Maguire, in a way, is all about Jerry losing his virginity. We all know the scene where Jerry is begging Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr) to remain his client, with all the “I love” whatever and “Show me the” so and so. But his true deflowering comes later, in his car, singing Free Fallin'. Jerry is a terrible singer, but he doesn't have a choice. Singing must be done, so he sings. He flips around stations forever, trying to find something, as you do when you must sing, and Free Fallin' is the closest he can find to the way he feels. That's Cameron Crowe for you. This guy doesn't know anything except human comedy, and he always seems to find the right song for it too.

Crowe was also inspired in his casting of Jerry Maguire. Besides Cruise and Gooding, he put Renee Zellwegger on the fast-track, in a performance so sincere she made Jonathan Lipnicki seem like a real kid (he wasn't a real kid, was he?) Oh, and Bonnie Hunt as Zellwegger's no-nonsense sister (one of these days, I'd like to see an older sister in a movie who is just chock full of nonsense. I mean, it's Bonnie Hunt, so, rock, but still. She can be something besides the voice of reason once in a while. Throw her a Jane Lynch here and there.)

At the beginning of Tom Cruise's career, he made a movie called Losin' It, a teen comedy about doing it with Shelly Long. I'm not sure what happens in the movie, although I'm pretty sure they all lose it. I do know that it took Jerry Maguire to open Cruise up a little more in movies. Jerry is a loser, and never really finds full redemption. He doesn't win the big race or make the big speech or save the day. He's just got his goldfish in a baggy. I'd probably react differently to the movie now that I think Cruise might be a little crazy in real life. Jerry loses his mind a few times in the movie, stomping around and screaming, just like Tom Cruise when you ask what he thinks of chiropractors. For now though, I hold Jerry Maguire in pretty high regard in my head. Nothing like the first time, you know.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin: B+
Jerry Maguire: A-