Film: Don’t Knock It

Don’t Knock It

Two years ago, Judd Apatow made a sly, subversive little foray into gross-out comedy called The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which took a plot as old as Porky’s (a desperate virgin trying to get laid with the help of his horndog friends) and added some twists: The virgin was a middle-aged guy with too much chest hair, a job at a big-box electronics store, and a collection of mint-condition action figures lining the shelves of his immaculate bachelor pad; the girl who finally made a man of him was a divorced mother of three (and grandmother of one); and their first night of passion also happened to be their wedding night. The movie grossed a couple hundred million dollars and made a star out of Steve Carell, who played the innocent of the title; it also announced Apatow’s arrival as the Scorsese of a heretofore nonexistent subgenre, the socially conservative raunchfest.

Don’t Knock It

Two years ago, Judd Apatow made a sly, subversive little foray into gross-out comedy called The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which took a plot as old as Porky’s (a desperate virgin trying to get laid with the help of his horndog friends) and added some twists: The virgin was a middle-aged guy with too much chest hair, a job at a big-box electronics store, and a collection of mint-condition action figures lining the shelves of his immaculate bachelor pad; the girl who finally made a man of him was a divorced mother of three (and grandmother of one); and their first night of passion also happened to be their wedding night. The movie grossed a couple hundred million dollars and made a star out of Steve Carell, who played the innocent of the title; it also announced Apatow’s arrival as the Scorsese of a heretofore nonexistent subgenre, the socially conservative raunchfest.