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Canberra Today 15°/16° | Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review: ‘This is 40’ (M) *

JUDD Apatow’s sequel to “Knocked Up” may well have the 2013 Razzies’ “Worst Movie” done and dusted before any other contenders get released!

That’s kinda regrettable because while watching it is distinctly uncomfortable, a mind prepared to dissect it might conclude that its scarification of middle-class US family life deserves commendation.

Pete (Paul Mann) is about to turn 40. So is Debbie (Apatow’s off-camera wife Leslie Mann) but she’s in denial about the numbers. Their daughters (played by the Apatow children) reflect what’s wrong with how contemporary American (Australian as well) society is raising its next generation. His music-publishing business is floundering. Her casual-wear shop has sticky-fingered employees. Their parents’ lives are disconnected from spouses and grandchildren alike.

Imagine a housewife preparing dinner. But in the savoury dishes she uses sugar and in the dessert she uses salt. The result closely matches how Apatow’s film is delivering ideas that cry out for recognition. The screenplay is not dopey and the acting is not bad. Its behaviours can make a reasonable mind cringe simultaneously with that same mind thinking: “Well done. That needed saying.”

The problem is not the “well done”, but Apatow’s delivery of it. Early laughter generated by vocabulary gives way to audience silence. Good intentions drown beneath the film’s unremitting insistence on Apatow’s core theme – that materialism and lack of intellectual rigour in the home are pushing America toward a societal abyss. That’s not funny.

 At all cinemas

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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