When you strip away the jokes (and I'm not suggest in any way that you do that; the film is extraordinarily funny), THIS IS 40 is about the results of bad parenting and the daily struggle not to be a bad parent. Both lead characters, Pete and Debbie (Paul Rudd and Apatow's real-life wife Leslie Mann), supporting players in Apatow's KNOCKED UP, come from broken homes. Pete's father (played magnificently by Albert Brooks) is a world-class mooch, borrowing tens of thousands of dollars from his son so he can support his relatively new family that includes triplet toddlers. He levels guilt trips on his son that belong in the hall of fame for guilt trips (I firmly believe such a place exists). While Debbie's long-absent dad (John Lithgow) left when she was young and has made infrequent stops into her life every seven or eight years. Amid all of the spousal dismay over money, sex, aging, child rearing, etc., it's the details about these parent/grown child relationships that I found myself most drawn into.
Pete and Debbie seem to life a fairly comfortable California life. Peter has moved on from the record label he used to work for to starting his own retro-focused indie label (with co-workers like Lena Dunham and Chris O'Dowd, you could work in a worse place). He's recently arranged to put out the new album by the reunited Graham Parker and the Rumor, and it's not exactly setting the world on fire. Still, the jokes at Parker's expense are pretty hilarious. Debbie owns a clothing boutique, staffed by the likes of Charlyne Yi and Megan Fox, but Debbie suspects one of them has been stealing a whole lot of cash from the business.
Pete and Debbie still have two daughters (played by Apatow siblings Maude and Iris), and what's fascinating to notice is how different the girls' senses of humor are from each other. The older, Maude, is becoming a great actress; her tantrums laced with every four-letter word in the book are the stuff of legend. While Iris is more the straight-up joke teller. But their personal dramas (school bullies, living without certain technology to help the family save money) are in many ways a reflection of what is going on between their parents, who seem to bob and weave between deep understanding and affection for each other and outright rage.
THIS IS 40 is peppered with wonderful lines that seem to sum up their relationship for better or worse. A pillow talk moment where both agree that Pete is a dick. ("People think I'm so nice, but I'm such a dick," Pete says with a knowing grin.) Or the dismissive way Debbie talks about Pete when a girlfriend wonders if Debbie is worried about having the Megan Fox character work in such close proximity to her husband. "He wouldn't know what to do with that," she counters. Ouch! It's bizarre that a conversation Pete has with his best friend (Robert Smigel) about fantasizing about their wives dying (peacefully, of course) is one of the least disturbing moments in the movie.
But the film succeeds and shows Apatow maturing as a filmmakers through smaller, more dramatic scenes such as Debbie trying in a small way to seduce her husband and him accidentally rejecting her because he's so preoccupied with his failing business. Another scene has Debbie at lunch with her father flipping through the photos of his new family on his phone while he's away from the table. The look on her face tells the whole sad story. But there are signs that Pete and Debbie are destined to be together, the best example of which is when they team up in a school meeting against the parent (Melissa McCarthy) of a boy who is cyber-bullying their eldest. They essentially lie their way through the meeting, but it works and McCarthy is made to look like she has raised a devil child in the process. After this victory, rather than celebrate, Pete and Debbie simply go to their respective cars. It's a sobering moment.
I don't mean to paint a picture of THIS IS 40 that makes it seem heavy and sad. There are a few moments like that, but mostly it's the kind of smart, observant humor that we've come to expect from Apatow. He's a master of having the casting do much of the work for him, although appearances by Jason Segel (reprising his KNOCKED UP role as well) as Debbie's trainer or Michael Ian Black as the family accountant don't really pay off. But those of small parts of a much larger, well-executed comedy about a serious subject.
What the film isn't really about is age. Sure there are a few gags about Debbie lying about her age so often she's completely lost track of what age she's given to which people. But once the film gets past that tried-and-tested concept, it has much more interesting things to say about feeling old versus being old. There's a great sequence where Debbie goes out with Fox's character, Desi, to a club, and she meets a hockey player who clearly has a crush on her. It's a sweet, harmless scene despite the fact that the player is trying to sleep with her. And it's a great play on the feeling we get when someone shows an interest in us even though we're well aware we won't let it go beyond flirting.
The honesty in a moment like that is what sets THIS IS 40 apart. Pete eats too many sweets; Debbie sneaks cigarettes. They make vows to each other to quit and break them almost immediately. That's how relationships work—they ebb and flow and exist on a bed of little white lies, a couple of big secrets, and the wisdom to know when the truth can be your best friend and when it will destroy your very existence. Apatow has lived the kind of life where he can speak on these subjects knowingly and give us a sense of what this life is like if we haven't lived it ourselves. The film is as silly as it is important in the realm of relationship comedies. Not all of the observations ring true (the way the film wraps up the relationship between Debbie and her father is almost unforgivably quaint), but in the arena of comedy, no other film this year gets as many of the details this right.
