Judd Apatow's bittersweet love letter to the maddening malaise of wedded bliss, "This is 40" is a sprawling picture as poignant and touching as it is frustrating.
"40" is the sequel to Apatow's "Knocked Up," focusing this time on Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann, Apatow's real-life wife), a somewhat affluent couple nearing that milestone age of 40.
Pete and Debbie have a relatively happy marriage, which is to say they've settled into a rut dominated by getting their kids to bed and to school and themselves to work every day. Each runs their own business: Pete a small music label, and Debbie a small clothing boutique. This, of course, leaves precious little time between the two of them, and each is struggling at work.
Ironically, Apatow's biggest strength is also his biggest weakness. It's his penchant for lingering and malingering through scenes, allowing the actors to ad lib and let scenes develop naturalistically, that both provides the film's best moments and contributes to its ambling, often floundering nature.
The material is clearly close to Apatow's heart and is at least semi-autobiographical, but at the same time he seems too close to it. The result led my friend and colleague Lou Harry to dub the movie "This is 40 Minutes Too Long."
Indeed, there is a lot of plot packed into the film; a subplot about Debbie's shop and whether an employee (Megan Fox) is stealing money from her; Pete's struggling record label and his insistence on only signing tired old acts that don't sell; parties featuring Pete's and Debbie's fathers (played, respectively, by Albert Brooks and John Lithgow) but, curiously, not Debbie's sister (played by Katherine Heigl in the first film).
There is more, but through it all are wonderful moments related to their marriage — a getaway "vacation," a moment at their daughter's school and more intimate bits like Debbie throwing herself at Pete and Pete spending just a little too much time in the restroom.
It all adds up to a mashup that suffers from the same maladies as did several of Apatow's previous films: too much loosely connected plot, not enough pacing. Much of what is there is often wonderful, but there are two films worth of material crammed into one.
It may not be 40 minutes too long, but it could certainly be trimmed by a good 20.