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'This Is 40,' from Judd Apatow and Starring Paul Rudd

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'This Is 40,' from Judd Apatow and Starring Paul Rudd HOME PAGE TODAY'S PAPER VIDEO MOST POPULAR U.S. Edition Subscribe: Digital / Home Delivery Log In Register Now Help Search All NYTimes.com Movies WORLD U.S. N.Y. / REGION BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY SCIENCE HEALTH SPORTS OPINION ARTS STYLE TRAVEL JOBS REAL ESTATE AUTOS Search Movies or Showtimes by ZIP Code More in Movies » In Theaters Coming Soon Critics' Picks On DVD Tickets & Showtimes Trailers ArtsBeat Advertise on NYTimes.com MOVIE REVIEW Log in to see what your friends Log In With Facebook Happy Birthday, You Miserable Achievers are sharing on nytimes.com. ‘This Is 40,’ From Judd Apatow and Starring Paul Rudd Privacy Policy | What’s This? What’s Popular Now Our Imaginary Study in Science Weight Problem Shows ‘End of History Illusion’ Tickets & Showtimes Enter your ZIP code or city to view tickets and showtimes in your area. City, State or ZIP More Theaters Near You » Suzanne Hanover/Universal Pictures From left, Iris Apatow, Maude Apatow, Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann in "This is 40." By A. O. SCOTT Published: December 20, 2012 What’s going on with Pete and Debbie? First of all: You remember FACEBOOK Pete and Debbie, don’t you? They were the designated grown-ups TWITTER played by Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann in “Knocked Up,” a movie GOOGLE+ about the accidental conception and hilarious gestation of their niece. The Collection E-Mail If you want an update on that child, who would be in kindergarten SAVE Sign up for the latest in all things fashion from acclaimed critics and reporters of The Times delivered weekly. E-MAIL by now, you won’t find it in “This Is 40,” Judd Apatow’s “sort-of sequel” to the earlier movie and the fourth feature film he has SHARE Privacy Policy directed. (The baby’s parents were played by Katherine Heigl and PRINT Seth Rogen, who have moved on to other things.) REPRINTS MOST E-MAILED MOST VIEWED More About This Movie This one is all about Pete and Debbie, 1. DAVID BROOKS Overview who, along with their two daughters, Suffering Fools Gladly occupy a big white house in one of Los Tickets & Showtimes Angeles’s nicer ZIP codes and who, in 2. Why You Won’t Be the Person You the course of a hectic week, undergo Expect to Be New York Times Review — well, what, exactly? A matched set of midlife crises? A 3. 36 Hours in Philadelphia Cast, Credits & Awards rough patch in their marriage? A flurry of “first-world problems” so trivial as to be an insult to the planet’s Readers' Reviews struggling masses? A seminar in postmodern, postfeminist 4. EZEKIEL J. EMANUEL Trailers & Clips gender politics? Yes, sure, all of that, but to drop their Better, if Not Cheaper, Care troubles into such neat conceptual boxes would be to converted by Web2PDFConvert.com troubles into such neat conceptual boxes would be to 5. CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK simplify a situation that is both agreeably and annoyingly Refined Titillation, With Breeding as the Watch This Movie messy. Tease 6. PAUL KRUGMAN All of a sudden — and not, you suspect, for the first time — Battles of the Budget Related the stresses of work, parenthood, money and intimacy threaten to add up to something big and scary. Pete’s Judd 7. MOVIE REVIEW | '56 UP' Apatow’s record label is in financial peril, which he hopes the success The British Class Divide, on a Personal Family Scale Business of a new album by the British New Wave stalwart Graham By DAVE ITZKOFF Parker will dispel. Debbie, who owns a boutique, suspects 8. OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR In “This Is 40” Mr. that one of her employees (either Charlyne Yi or Megan Our Absurd Fear of Fat Apatow is at the helm, his wife, Leslie Mann, and their Fox) is embezzling money. Pete’s father (Albert Brooks) is a daughters are in the cast, and noodge and a sponge, constantly borrowing money from 9. Bringing Exclusivity to Dogs, and the characters have grown up. Owners his grown son to support his do-over lifestyle, which features rambunctious blond triplets. Debbie’s dad (John Related 10. A Series of Poses for Fitness, Inside and Lithgow), who also has a second family, is a chilly, ArtsBeat: Strange Bedfellows: Out Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann on intermittent presence in her life. 'This Is 40' (November 14, 2012) Go to Complete List » Show My Recommendations Enlarge This Image Then there are the adolescent mood swings of Pete and Debbie’s older daughter, Sadie (Maude Apatow), and the skirmishes that break out between Sadie and her irrepressible younger sister, Charlotte (Iris Apatow). Hovering over all of this hectic business is something vaguer, deeper and sadder: a malaise in Pete and Debbie’s relationship that leads them to question the foundations of Suzanne Hanover/Universal Pictures Ms. Mann and Mr. Rudd in "This is 40." their marriage. In a panic in the wake of a momentous birthday, Debbie embarks on a campaign of family self- improvement, limiting screen time, cooking healthy meals Titillation, with breeding and and nagging everyone into a frenzy that almost matches her own. For his part, Pete manners as the tease clowns, mopes and steals away to the bathroom to play with his iPad. ALSO IN ARTS » Shirley MacLaine joins the cast of "Downton Abbey" Cushioned by comforts that most of their fellow citizens can scarcely imagine, they TV's missed opportunities in 2012 nonetheless feel as if things were starting to go pear-shaped. (Only metaphorically: The nytimes.com Arts two of them are enviably trim, in spite of Pete’s weakness for cupcakes. He bikes a lot.) “Do you still even like me?” Debbie asks her husband in one of many moments of vulnerability. An entirely plausible answer would be: Who cares? We’ve all got troubles, sister. But I want to suggest that the movie’s ability to foresee — even to welcome — a hostile or indifferent response counts in its favor. “This Is 40” is an intensely, at times embarrassingly, personal film, by a man who has worked hard, lucked out and wants to share some of his happiness and its attendant worries with the rest of us. Mr. Apatow is, quite literally, showing off his lovely wife (that would be Ms. Mann) and their lively, talented daughters, and if Mr. Rudd is not precisely an alter ego (a description that might equally apply to Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell and plenty of other male performers in comedies bearing the Apatow brand), he is at least a plausible place holder. He is nice but not cloying, goofy but not dumb, smart but not snotty, and good-looking in a way that doesn’t make the rest of us feel too bad about ourselves. Mr. Brooks, a godfather of neurotic, passive-aggressive film comedy, once made a movie called “Defending Your Life.” Mr. Apatow, though he has absorbed some of Mr. Brooks’s deadpan, buried-joke filmmaking style, does not share his penchant for anxious introspection. The social milieu of “This Is 40” is generationally, geographically and professionally adjacent to the one explored by Larry David in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but any trace of that show’s self-lacerating misanthropy has been filtered out of the Southern California air. A gaggle of funny troupers — including Melissa McCarthy, Jason Segel, Chris O’Dowd and Lena Dunham — shuffles through the picture, offering up bursts of shtick, but there is more sweetness than cruelty in most of their antics. In other words, for all its crude jokes and on-the-money observations of the tastes and consumer habits of aging white Gen X-ers (we still love the Pixies!), “This Is 40” should not be mistaken for satire. While it makes fun of some of Pete’s and Debbie’s foibles and blind spots — his immaturity, her neediness, their complementary ways of not listening to converted by Web2PDFConvert.com each other — it declines to treat the characters as types or to treat their behavior as symptomatic. The audience, of course, is free to take up the slack, to despise Pete and Debbie, even at the risk of hypocrisy. Look at those two, fretting about money, with a BMW and a Lexus in the driveway, the kids in private school and enough left over for a romantic resort getaway and a lavish catered birthday party. In a town that runs on philanthropic fund-raisers and celebrity activism, Pete and Debbie support no cause beyond themselves. They are complacent, over-entitled and kind of mean. But the film’s refusal of the detachment that would make them easy targets for judgment is finally a mark of integrity, even generosity. You are brought into a state of intimacy, of complicity, with characters you may find it difficult to like but who, at the same time, require constant affirmation of their goodness. And they are good, or at least good enough. So is the movie. It snuggles up next to you, breathes in your face, dribbles crumbs on your shirt and laughs at its own jokes. Such proximity makes it easy to notice flaws, and there are a lot of loose ends and a few forced conclusions. But, then again, the acceptance of imperfection is Mr. Apatow’s theme, so a degree of sloppiness is to be expected. That’s life. “This Is 40” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Sex, drug use, smoking and swearing. They say it’s the new 20. This Is 40 Opens on Friday nationwide. Written and directed by Judd Apatow; director of photography, Phedon Papamichael; edited by Brent White; music by Jon Brion; production design by Jefferson Sage; costumes by Leesa Evans; produced by Barry Mendel and Clayton Townsend; released by Universal Pictures.
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