Review of The 41–Year–Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It (2010) by Erik S — 29 May 2010

With all the terrible spoof movies you see today, it's hard to give any of them a chance just from prior knowledge of their reputation. This however, was not terrible at all. It wasn't "so stupid it's funny." It was actually pretty smart. Sadly you probably won't hear about it or care to see it if you do just because you've grown to hate these types of movies. But remember how good they were back in the day? Remember Airplane? Robin Hood: Men in Tights? Yeah, it's possible to make a good spoof movie. It's not like they've been doomed to suck from day one. As long as you don't have an idiot making an idiotic movie, we'll be fine.

Most spoof movies these days try to poke fun at random movies that were popular, and it usually becomes a jumbled mess. Remember how lame Epic Movie and Date Movie were? And, less we forget the horrid Disaster Movie. Meet the Spartans had some promise, but it turned out to be stupid as well as it had nowhere to go when it was only making fun of one movie most of the time (and randomly making fun of Happy Feet and Shrek?). There's never any point to these movies, they're usually just trying (very poorly) to mock certain film genres. This one does the opposite. It does what it's supposed to. They don't make fun of a genre, but instead focus on the themes of these genres and exploit them in the best way possible.

From the title you can already assume that it's going to make fun of Judd Apatow comedies, and it does just that. From the opening scene the film focuses on exploiting one thing and one thing only: sex. And maybe drugs here and there. But it warps together four Apatow movies (do I really need to tell you which ones?) in a way that isn't bad at all, it actually makes it a plausible story of it's own.

We have the 41-year-old virgin, who for some reason lives (or maybe frequently hangs out) with three sex-crazed teenagers (clearly the three from Superbad), one obvious Seth Rogen (the guy really looks and sounds like him), the typical foreigner and a black guy who ages backwards like Benjamin Button. Sounds crazy right? It may be pretty absurd at points, but it never slips away from its main point, which is pointing out the sexual nature of modern comedies, particularly Apatow films. Besides that, it throws in a few jokes pointed towards reality, such as one scene that makes fun of To Catch a Predator, which I think is one of the funniest scenes I've seen in a movie in a long time.

Anyway, his guy has decided to do something about his virginity, and his friends step in to help him, but he ends up getting blamed for impregnating a girl who's psycho. I'm not going to say anymore, because it's just so ridiculous you have to watch it to understand how well it pulls off ripping these films a new one. But I'll tell you now that it's not one to avoid. If you like the satirical humor of Airplane (you can see the apparent influence), then this is for you. I really don't know who not to recommend this movie to. Although it's not completely fantastic, because it tends to get a little carried away sometimes, it's still one of the best spoofs I've seen in a while.