Movies With Butter

This Is 40 trailer is a Judd Apatow comedy that pokes fun of married life, tween children and work, using depressing, loveless and sarcastic humor about killing your spouse, aging and children entering puberty.

Judd Apatow has a formula and his formula is to turn his life into comedy. It could be relatable and funny except supposedly 40 is now the new 30, and not where aging and sagging boobs start sinking in or down. His jokes need to be a bit younger because a bunch of women, half of them in their 40s, made a funny movie called Bridesmaids and steered away from aging women jokes. He should put the aging jokes in when he makes “This is 60” instead.

It’s also difficult to sympathize with or appreciate female characters that are too whiny or unusually sexy. Leslie Mann uses a childish or baby talk combined with a nasal whine that is extremely annoying. Maybe that’s how she always talked and I’ve never noticed. Megan Fox has become the Barbie doll of movies. She doesn’t serve much purpose other than look picture perfect and voluptuously beautiful.

Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann cannot be further away from a married couple in this movie. The trailer opens with two guys talking about how their wives should be dead and replacing them with other women, and it goes south from there. It continues with scenes of the couple sleeping a couple feet apart, walking about that distance apart from each other, hiding in the bathroom for alone time, and talking about poisoning or killing each other. I’d probably be worried if my spouse spoke that specifically about killing me.

The trailer scenes are funny, but as a story, it is a sad reality that I cannot relate to. Of course, being a Judd Apatow movie, there is always a happy, sappy ending involving a tremendous amount of love after all the anger and tears have flown. It’s probably the weakest of his movies so far and one that I don’t mind skipping.

This Is 40 is scheduled to open on December 21, 2012. It stars the usual Apatow suspects – Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, the Apatow children, as well as some new additions Megan Fox, Jason Segel, Melissa McCarthy, John Lithgow, Lena Dunham, Chris O’Dowd and others.

This Is 40 Trailer: