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'The 40 Year-Old Virgin' scores big laughs

Each generation in our media age is bestowed a leading comedy brotherhood, a fraternity of funny, whose elite members rule film and television. There was the Mel Brooks and Sid Caesar gang back when and the ubiquitous "Saturday Night Live" alums in the '70s, '80s and '90s, from Chevy Chase to Adam Sandler. Now, in the time of the Wilson brothers and "The Daily Show," when yucks elicit yuks and irony is iron-clad, we have a bratty laugh pack featuring, among others, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Luke and Owen Wilson and those newish arrivals, Steve Carell and Paul Rudd.

Those last two guys teamed with Ferrell for 2004's "Anchorman" and return in a pop comedy of similar lowest-common-denominator aspirations, yet one with a sweeter heart and less surreal execution. "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" stars Carell as exactly that, a 40-year-old virgin. Forty. A virgin. It's its own punch line.

Universal Pictures 'The 40 Year-Old Virgin' 3 out of 5 stars Director: Judd Apatow Starring: Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, Romany Malco Release date: August 19, 2005 Rating: R for pervasive sexual content, language and some drug use. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

But Carell, who wrote the movie with director Judd Apatow (the mastermind behind TV's great "Freaks & Geeks" and co-producer of "Anchorman"), plays his amicable super-goober Andy Stitzer with a nice-guy earnestness that gives the sometimes raunchy comedy a believable sincerity.

Andy is a nebbish and loner who, when not working as an electronics store drone, cloisters himself in an apartment jammed with action figures, video games and comic books. The setup follows the adage that the breed of man-boy who devotes his life to comics and sci-fi conventions never gets bedroom action; somewhere a planet needs saving from intergalactic ruin.

When his co-workers — played by Rudd (a nice guy who misses his ex-girlfriend), Romany Malco (the fumbling philanderer) and the brilliant Seth Rogen (as a blunt-talking stoner) — discover Andy's inactivity, they resolve to fix it. That is, to devirginize the man, who doesn't seem to know what he is missing. He's too busy mooning over his "Six Million Dollar Man" doll.

And there you have it — today's high-concept comedy. Like so many modern comedies scripted and produced by television exiles, "Virgin" traces a modest narrative arc below what is really just a series of episodes — a protracted situation comedy. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and the movie, despite an overarching generic sheen, is satisfactorily funny and enjoyable. The main players, including the usually flinty Catherine Keener, who has never been looser, softer or more charming, are extremely likable, turning what could have been a doltish wallow in lazy lewdness into something smarter and more soulful.

In their juvenile but plausible mission to deflower Andy, his friends try the obvious — a dating service — and the less so — getting his Sasquatchian chest waxed, a scene so amusingly bizarre that it's sure to become a minor classic.

At first Andy's virginity is played for obvious laughs, when he is a sitting duck of derision. But as Apatow showed on "Freaks and Geeks" and later on "Undeclared" (both of which co-starred Rogen, who also co-produced this film), comedy has higher returns when it's rooted in real-life emotions, unlike, say, a "Deuce Bigalow" movie, which seems to take place on the cold and faraway Planet Fathead. Andy's quest blooms into a heartfelt journey filled with the pains of romance and the fears of intimacy, though it is still broad enough to stay in the realm of bawdy comedy. Take comfort that the movie does not deprive viewers the obligatory homophobia, masturbation and vomit gags.

Carell can do vapid nerdiness on autopilot — see him on "Daily Show" reruns and as the dumbest man alive in "Anchorman" — and he coasts through the first 20 minutes of "Virgin." As the movie proceeds it gets both funnier and more sincere and Carell flips on a touching innocence and authentic charm you might not have expected from the sometimes smarmy performer. He relaxes into a believable human, not the alien dweeb he would probably have to play in a dumber movie.

That's not to say "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" is genius. In fact, the film's finale exposes the weakness of comedies driven by a gang of people who perhaps work together too often. Recycling can be a problem, and Carell, Rudd and Apatow can't resist reprising one of the most popular bits from "Anchorman," when the cast sings "Afternoon Delight" in an outlandish musical number. This time they peel off their shirts for a lavish production of "Age of Aquarius" that, besides not fitting in an otherwise mostly grounded movie, simply isn't funny. For me at least, it was a shame that a lot of earned good will abruptly turned into a full-body cringe.