This is 40
The more I’ve been thinking about Judd Apatow’s “This is 40” in the day since I saw it, the more I find myself going back to “Knocked Up,” Apatow’s 2007 comedy where we first met Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Apatow’s real-life wife, Leslie Mann). The more I think back to that film, the more I see how much their trials and travails in the new film seem to mirror their issues in “Knocked Up.” Don’t get me wrong, “This is 40” finds a lot of truth in marriage and life as Pete and Debbie get ready to turn 40, as well as dealing with their two daughters (who fight all the time), their jobs (which are not going well), and their fathers (who have issues of their own), and Rudd and Mann are hilarious and heartfelt in their interactions together (Mann, in particular, is stellar). But wasn’t Rudd trying to escape from the responsibilities of family life, and follow his passions, in “Knocked Up” as well? Wasn’t Mann insecure about getting older in that film also? Weren’t their daughters arguing and bickering all the time? It doesn’t seem like a lot has changed in five years. I enjoyed the movie, especially when Albert Brooks and John Lithgow came on-screen as the fathers, but it feels a little too much like the same-old same-old, especially when Apatow stretches it out to a 140-minute running time.
